Dell Inspiron Notebooks?

[ArchStudent]

Well I finally gave in and purchased a Dell Inspiron 600m, mainly because of the light weight of the notebook, and the features were what I needed.

I was wondering what experience people have had with their Dell notebooks (Inspiron or others)?

This is my system that I ordered:

- Intel Pentium®M Processor at 1.4GHz w/ 14.1" SXGA+ Display & ATI 64MB Video
- MS XP Pro
- 512MB DDR SDRAM
- 30GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
- 4x CD/DVD burner (16X CD-R-10X CD-RW-4X DVD+R-2.4X DVD+RW)
- Dell TrueMobile?1300 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card
- Basic Battery and AC Adapter

Does anyone have a similar system, and if you do how do you like your 600m?

Thanks,
ArchStudent

 

[kayatai]

I have a similar system, minus the DVD burner (I have CDRW/DVD). And I have 640mb ram (128 + 512 Crucial) because it was cheaper. And I only have XGA i believe.

Loving it so far (4 months). Light, quiet, powerful, decent gaming, long battery life. Got a free modular battery too.

I do get a random BSOD once in awhile (maybe 1 every 3-4 days with average of 8 hrs/day useage).

 

[ArchStudent]

Originally posted by: kayatai
I have a similar system, minus the DVD burner (I have CDRW/DVD). And I have 640mb ram (128 + 512 Crucial) because it was cheaper. And I only have XGA i believe.

sounds pretty sweet!

I do get a random BSOD once in awhile (maybe 1 every 3-4 days with average of 8 hrs/day useage).

I like to leave my current system on, but I use the power saving features... to lazy to wait for the system to boot up*l*. What is your battery life like, an average estimate?

 

[thuned]

~4 hours. I have intel extreme graphics so I think that saves some power.

 

[Pandaren]

I don't own one, but I have several friends who own them and these are my impressions:

Build quality is not bad (better than Inspiron 4150/8200 machines) and the LCDs are excellent.

My major gripe is with the keyboard (springy or mushy) and the touchpad. The touchpad is manufactured by Alps, and it has terrible precision compared to the Synaptics touchpad on my T40.

A 600m is almost always faster than a T40 at a given pricepoint though.

 

[ek9]

600m 1.4ghz XGA
64mb M9
640mb
30gb
CDRW/DVD combo
Truemobile 1300

I like it, pretty small and light. I get about 3.5-4hrs on battery with wifi enabled just surfing the net/office apps. Gaming I get about 1.5-2hrs on battery. I used to get random lockups in games but ever since I did a fresh format like 2 weeks ago(I also formatted when I got it 3months ago) and installed the Catalyst 3.7 drivers its been fine. I guess it was a driver conflict in the registry or something. My friend ordered the same exact system as myself and he likes it too but he gets maybe 3hrs tops on battery, he even sold his desktop. My 600m came with a Sanyo battery while his came with a Panasonic one. Can't really beat it for the price I paid ($1026 shipped).

 

[ArchStudent]

Would there be a difference between the Intel wireless card wich is 802.11b and the Dell Truemobile 1300 which is 802.11g?

Would that affect the battery power life?

 

[ArchStudent]

Originally posted by: ArchStudent
Would there be a difference between the Intel wireless card wich is 802.11b and the Dell Truemobile 1300 which is 802.11g?

Would that affect the battery power life?

err, I decided to go with the Dell truemobile 1300 WLAN, but does that mean that the machine is not considered a true Centrino? If I switch to the Intel Pro/Wireless might I expect a better battery life?

These are the two here:

- Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 WLAN (802.11b, 11Mbps) miniPCI Card Centrino Mobile Technology

- Dell TrueMobile?1300 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card

 

[eriqesque]

err, I decided to go with the Dell truemobile 1300 WLAN, but does that mean that the machine is not considered a true Centrino? If I switch to the Intel Pro/Wireless might I expect a better battery life?

These are the two here:

- Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 WLAN (802.11b, 11Mbps) miniPCI Card Centrino Mobile Technology

- Dell TrueMobile?1300 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card[/quote]

Definatly looses the Centrino branding but I'm not sure if it will make a noticeable differance in the battery.

 

[Mucman]

1.4GHz
1GB Ram (free upgrade )
14.1" XGA
Radeon 9000 64M
30G

Triple booting WinXP, BeOS and FreeBSD with out any problems. The KB is definitely not as good as IBM keyboards, but I didn't
want to pay $500 more either.

Ihttp://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=51&threadid=1117677

That post has a good description of my experience. Colse notes version is that after a week, my motherboard died. There was a shipping
mixpup on Dell's part, but overall my view of their support is pretty good.

 

[Joony]

Latitude D600 (Business equivalent of the 600M)

1.3
128mb ram
14.1" XGA
Radeon 9000 32M
40GB 5400RPM

Anyone got an extra modular battery for sale?

 

[ArchStudent]

well I'll post when I know what the news is once I recieve my laptop This will be a change for me. I just sold my tower to a friend that needed a system, so I gave up my +1GHz system with 512MB of memory... kind of sux going back to a slower machine(Current Laptop is a Celery 466 w/ 256 MB memory). Also reverting from XP back to Win98Se was a challenge

Oh yeah, will I need to charge the laptop's battery up for a several hrs before I use it for the first time?

Will keep you posted

 

[ArchStudent]

oh yeah, one other thing that I forgot to ask!

Can anyone recomend some decent headphones (not too expensive, nor too cheap) for the laptop? I want to be able to listen to music at night, but not really bug anyone around me.



Mucman, sounds like Dell really impressed you with their tech support. I was impressed by the prices and the financing! The only thing that sucked was the taxes afterwards

14.5% for BC is ridiculous, I wish I were in AB or one of the other provinces with lower taxes.

Oh, I should mention that my Dell notebook came with the DVD-RW + DVD-R/ CD-RW + CD-R upgrade for free, and free shipping, and they salesperon I spoke to upgraded me to Windows XP Professional for $75 instead of the $150 they want for XP Professional

Two or three weeks ago, Dell had a system with a free upgrade to 768MB memory and a CD RW / DVD combo drive, unfortunately I missed out on that one, but I am happy with this one having a DVD burner

 

[Mucman]

ArchStudent, yeah they were pretty good. I was also glad to get in on the 1GB RAM deal since the day before it was the free upgrade to the
DVD-RW (something I would never use).

Going to have to test their support again though (check out my thread)