Dell Inspiron 6000: After Two Months

It’s still the best laptop I have bought to date. In a previous post I mentioned how I had stuck with HP products. Changing brands was difficult. I tend to be brand loyal, but HP did not offer what I wanted. I wanted something that could replace my desktop.

Battery Life

I bought the larger battery. On my other laptop, the battery never lasted more than 2 hours. It was disappointing. What’s the point of a laptop when you have to recharge the battery every two hours? Anyways I have the 2.0 M processor, the 15.4 screen with the 80 gig drive system. With the laptop in Max Battery mode, it’s lasting between 5 and 6 hours per charge. This is of course with Bluetooth and WiFi off and the DVD/CD not spinning.

Performance

For a laptop it’s fast. It can handle all the programs I used on my desktop. Even though it’s technically “slower” than the desktop, two reason for this: One, it’s got its own video card with 128 Megs of ram. No sharing system ram with the GPU. Two, it’s running Intel’s new M processor. The M processor is essentially a ground up rework of their P4 processor.

One of the area’s I am disappointed in is the HD transfer rate. It seems the hard drive is the bottle neck on this system. It’s a 5400 RPM drive, when I transfer large files (gigs) or the computer is doing intensive drive work the system is virtually unusable.

I had the same problem in my previous laptop. I bought a new faster larger drive (from 4200 to 5400 rpm) and the system response time increased by about 25 percent.

Monitor, Misc…

Monitor performance/resolution is outstanding. The resolution is sharp (1680×1050). Dell uses Samsung screens, let me say this: the LCD does not have any dead/defective pixels.

A feature I miss on my Dell is the ability to shut off the touchpad. As I am writing this post my thumb brushes over the pad and it randomly moves the cursor to other part of the screen.

Another let down is the lack of a ps/2 port — I tried to plug-in my older keyboard, but there wasn’t any place to put it.

Closing

I love having my laptop as my primary computer. It’s only a matter of shutting down the system and putting it in my backpack and I am off. Everything at my finger tips. None of this syncing with the desktop and hoping I didn’t miss anything.

If you are looking for a new laptop, I would highly recommend a Dell.