Dell 5160 Honest Review!

Alot of people have been knocking on the dell 5160. I just wanted to take a second and tell you my review of it. I recieved my 5160 today and was suprised how fast it was. I go the 5160 with the 3.2GHz P4 512MB Ram 64mb video card and an 80GIG HD. The second i took it out and booted it up i knew it was time to reinstall windows. Dell puts so much crap on there, also they tweak things like mouse latency and things of that nature. After a clean install the mouse speed across the screen and worked AWSOME!. That was one of my worries when i purchased the system. According to some people the mouse moves slow, but with a fresh install it moves great , couldnt ask for a better touch pad. Next i looked into the actual speed of the machine. It is a 3ghz p4 , but dell preconfigures the system to run the cpu at 1.7GHz stock. This is to save on battery life, but its pointless in my opinion. If you pay for a 3GHz i want 3GHZ! Anyway with the fresh install that wiped the dell configurations clean and i am now running at a full 3GHz. I couldnt be more happy with the speed of this baby. Next some of you may have heard that there were screen issues. The screen is absoulte STUNNING!!! Im running it at 1200 x768 and it looks awsome. Next comes the over heating issues that have been spread around the forums. Its a 3GHz P4 people of course its going to run hot... But so far it hasnt been an issue. The rear fan is pumping warm air out and heat doesnt seem to be an issue. Finally weight. Yes it may be on the heafty side, but people this is a desktop replacement. Its still very portable and packs plenty of power. Also its a very solid system. The laptop housing its very solid.

So all in all i love my 5160. If you want speed and performance and want to save a few bucks the 5160 is for you. My only suggestion for all dell laptops is to reinstall your own copy of windows to remove all the dell software, and dell settings.I would also like to mention that i got this using the $750 coupon, and i loaded the system up to over 1800 bucks and it was the best $1,050 ive ever spent.

Well a fresh install is deleting the current partitions on the harddrive " dell sets it up strange" just delte all the current partitions and create one large one. To do this u need a windows xp cd, you can either use the one that came with the system or u can use your own. I used my copy of xp pro. Put the cd in the drive and reboot the system. On startup hit the F12 key before you boot into windows. this will prompt you to your boot sequence and you can select wich device to boot to. You will choose the cd drive then will be promted to press any key to continue. Once its runs a few checks on the system. You select install a new or "fresh" copy of xp. Then delete the current partitions. and create one large partition. Then select install xp on that drive, and it will prompt you to format the drive via ntfs file system. This will do its thing and take about 25mins to run threw the whole harddrive. After that completes its will reboot and will direct you threw the windows install. Once your all setup, go back and install all the drivers that came on the dell rescue cd. Only select drivers and utilities you want. Avoid dell tech support garbarge. After that you should be all set. Only problem i had was finding the wireless driver on the cd, but its availible on the dell website so dont worry. I recommand the reinstall, when i first turned my computer on the mouse looked like it moved slow and the fact that cpu was set at 1.7 ghz pissed me off, so i did a reinstall asap, and was so happy and pleased with the performance after the reinstall.

So good luck with your new system. By the way if u need help with the reinstall or have any questions u can email me at atandoi@gmail.com, also dell tech support can walk you threw the refotmat and reinstall process, just tell them you have a bunch of junk on your computer and u just want a fresh install, they should help you with no questions asked. P.S. If you let tech support guide you, avoid install there extra junk, the tech guy will probly suggest installing it.

right click my my computer and click properties, then is should be displayed with your cpu speed and ram. mine had said 3.2ghz and under it 1.7, you dont need to reformat to change this setting, i just hate when dell or anyone configures my system, their settings may not be the ones i you. It just made it easier for me to do a fresh install before i loaded all my software on the machine. Just my opinion