DELL Inspiron 6000 Review

I posted a review of my new laptop on a guild mates website: Laptop Showcase - DELL Inspiron 6000 Review

For archiving purposes, here is a copy of the review:

Specifications

Processor: Intel Pentium M730 1.6GHz, ATI Radeon Mobility X300 128MB, 15,4" wide screen XGA, 512 MB 333MHz DDR2 RAM, 40 GB Ultra ATA hard disk 5400 rpm, 24x CD-RW / 8x DVD combo drive, Intel ProWireless 2200 802.11 b/g WiFi

Review

The Dell Inspiron 6000 is a very nice compromise between the different extremes of the laptop market. Weighing over 3 kg it is not an ultra-light machine, but it isn't a huge desktop replacement PC either. Instead it offers a bit of both, decent performance even with games, while still portable.

Thanks to its ATI Radeon Mobility X300 128 MB graphics card, which is an optional upgrade, the Dell Inspiron 6000 in this configuration scores a nice 3DMark03 benchmark of 2536, which is pretty much identical to an older desktop I have with a Radeon 9600 Pro. That means you can get all games to at least run on this laptop, even if the framerates in Doom 3 won't be nothing to write home about. It is also more than sufficient to watch DVDs on, although the DVD / CDRW drive is a bit on the noisy side.

The Dell Inspiron 6000 comes normally with a 6-cell battery. So I ordered a second battery, a 9-cell one, and for some reason unknown to me Dell decided to make both batteries 9-cell, instead of giving me a small and a big one. Nice, two of these 80 Wh batteries will last a complete transatlantic flight, each one giving up to 5 hours of power.

The laptop comes with a modem, ethernet card, and WiFi, of which I am using the latter. That was very easy to set up, I just needed to type in the WEP-key which I use to prevent others from surfing on my connection, and I was ready to go. You can also get Bluetooth, but I didn't take this optional extra.

The Dell Inspiron 6000 does not have a "stick" for mouse control, only a touchpad. A Kensington Pocket Mouse is a recommended extra. Having only used desktop keyboards before, a laptop keyboard takes time getting used to, but the keys are big enough and have enough "depths" to give a real typing feeling.

Up to now I only used the laptop at home, where he does everything I wanted him to do. The real test will come once I travel with it, because I mainly bought it for being able to work, play games, and surf the net, while on the move.
- posted by Tobold @ 6:15 AM Permanent Link