April 18th/2005
Inspiron 6000 review
I received my new I6000 two weeks ago and wanted to give it a good thorough run before I did my review.
The main use for this unit was a desktop replacement. I need a good cpu, large hard drive, decent video playback. Gaming is not important to me as I own an xbox, ps2 and gamecube.
Bare with me as this is my first notebook review, actually it’s the only thing I have ever reviewed
Brief description of unit:
Inspiron 6000
Pentium M 1.6
XP Home Edition
512 Megs of DDR2 400 ram 256x2
80 gig 5400 RPM hard drive
Integrated Intel graphics 128 megs
WXGA 15 inch LCD
8X NEC 6500A DVD-RW drive
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection 802.11 B/G
6 Cell Battery
3 years onsite with complete care
$1399 CDN
I opened the box and noticed that the contents seemed well packed.
After inspecting the contents for damage I opnned the unit up and tried a boot up. I was surprised to see the battery
had a full charge straight from Dell.
CPU
Unit booted quickly into the XP welcome screen.
I have been running an AMD Athlon 2500XP and the I6000 seems quite a bit more responsive. I was impressed.
Although the fan is always on, its so quiet I hardly notice it. CPU seems to run fairly cool from about 28C to 35C. I’ll really have to run some more intensive apps to test the cooling further.
LCD SCREEN
Now the WXGA screen running at 1280x800 seems to be adequate. I have heard many good and bad things about the higher resolution models. So after some debate I decided to stick with the WXGA as this fits within my budget.
I have noticed minimal light leakage and found a small cluster of dead pixels almost center of the screen. Its not that big of a deal for me, its something I can live with. The screen could be a little crisper for my liking. Colors seem a little washed out. But still well within my expectations of a middle of the road notebook.
GAMING PERFORMANCE
I attempted to run 3D Mark. The opening sequence ran just awful. At about 1fps. I then installed the latest video drives directly from the Intel website, this helped slightly but not enough. This is actually pretty much what I had expected from the Intel video.
So I did some further testing and installed halo trial version. Using default settings the demo ran fairly decent, picture looked good and was not choppy at all. After turning up the video settings to max the game still ran well without problems. So there is a certain amount of gaming you can do with this unit. Just don’t plan on taking the I6000 to any Doom3 tournaments.
HARDDRIVE
Not much to say here, the 80 gig 5400 rpm Hitatchi drive is quiet and quick, but can run a little hot at times.
DVD PLAYBACK AND RECORDING
The NEC6500A 8X DL burner is a nice upgrade, I have only tried 2X and 8X DVDR discs. I burned a few movies and games discs. All burned well with no obvious errors. I tried a few different brands with no problems. I made several data and music CDs as well with no problems to report.
DVD Movie playback was flawless, I tried both the Windows Media Player and the Dell Media Experience.
What I noticed most about movie playback was how good the movie looked, I expected the colors to be washed out a liitle more like I have noticed with the desktop and photo editing. But I was surprised how good it looked. Now I have no other higher or lower end model to compare with, so playback results may look better on higher end units. I also did not notice and video studdering that some of the other memebrs of the forum have mentioned.
WIRELESS NETWORK
Wireless network with XP and the I6000 was a breeze. XP instantly found my network and logged me in. I have tested the distance with the I6000 and the Microsoft MN-500 802.11B router, I can get approximately 150 feet. I have a 3MB DSL line and I use my I6000 about 50 feet from the router and I still max it out to the full bandwidth of my DSL connection.
BATTERY LIFE
My notebook like many others spends about 99.9% of its life wired.
I never did a full battery test on this unit. But from what I can gather I should be good for at least 3 hours with wireless on and surfing the net.
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
I called Dell tech about my AC power adapter as it was making a loud buzzing/squealing noise. As the rep went through his usual power up, power down, insert this, remove that routine he determined my adapter was defective. This was on a Thursday night, Monday 10am there was a new ac adapter at my door. This was my only tech support issue and I would rate it as very good.
OVERALL
I would say the I6000 is a good choice for anyone looking for the middle of the road notebook.
I think this would be ideal for a student, work, hobbyist or anyone needing a laptop for other reasons than gaming.
if anyone feels they have anything to add, please feel free to do so
Inspiron 6000 review
I received my new I6000 two weeks ago and wanted to give it a good thorough run before I did my review.
The main use for this unit was a desktop replacement. I need a good cpu, large hard drive, decent video playback. Gaming is not important to me as I own an xbox, ps2 and gamecube.
Bare with me as this is my first notebook review, actually it’s the only thing I have ever reviewed
Brief description of unit:
Inspiron 6000
Pentium M 1.6
XP Home Edition
512 Megs of DDR2 400 ram 256x2
80 gig 5400 RPM hard drive
Integrated Intel graphics 128 megs
WXGA 15 inch LCD
8X NEC 6500A DVD-RW drive
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection 802.11 B/G
6 Cell Battery
3 years onsite with complete care
$1399 CDN
I opened the box and noticed that the contents seemed well packed.
After inspecting the contents for damage I opnned the unit up and tried a boot up. I was surprised to see the battery
had a full charge straight from Dell.
CPU
Unit booted quickly into the XP welcome screen.
I have been running an AMD Athlon 2500XP and the I6000 seems quite a bit more responsive. I was impressed.
Although the fan is always on, its so quiet I hardly notice it. CPU seems to run fairly cool from about 28C to 35C. I’ll really have to run some more intensive apps to test the cooling further.
LCD SCREEN
Now the WXGA screen running at 1280x800 seems to be adequate. I have heard many good and bad things about the higher resolution models. So after some debate I decided to stick with the WXGA as this fits within my budget.
I have noticed minimal light leakage and found a small cluster of dead pixels almost center of the screen. Its not that big of a deal for me, its something I can live with. The screen could be a little crisper for my liking. Colors seem a little washed out. But still well within my expectations of a middle of the road notebook.
GAMING PERFORMANCE
I attempted to run 3D Mark. The opening sequence ran just awful. At about 1fps. I then installed the latest video drives directly from the Intel website, this helped slightly but not enough. This is actually pretty much what I had expected from the Intel video.
So I did some further testing and installed halo trial version. Using default settings the demo ran fairly decent, picture looked good and was not choppy at all. After turning up the video settings to max the game still ran well without problems. So there is a certain amount of gaming you can do with this unit. Just don’t plan on taking the I6000 to any Doom3 tournaments.
HARDDRIVE
Not much to say here, the 80 gig 5400 rpm Hitatchi drive is quiet and quick, but can run a little hot at times.
DVD PLAYBACK AND RECORDING
The NEC6500A 8X DL burner is a nice upgrade, I have only tried 2X and 8X DVDR discs. I burned a few movies and games discs. All burned well with no obvious errors. I tried a few different brands with no problems. I made several data and music CDs as well with no problems to report.
DVD Movie playback was flawless, I tried both the Windows Media Player and the Dell Media Experience.
What I noticed most about movie playback was how good the movie looked, I expected the colors to be washed out a liitle more like I have noticed with the desktop and photo editing. But I was surprised how good it looked. Now I have no other higher or lower end model to compare with, so playback results may look better on higher end units. I also did not notice and video studdering that some of the other memebrs of the forum have mentioned.
WIRELESS NETWORK
Wireless network with XP and the I6000 was a breeze. XP instantly found my network and logged me in. I have tested the distance with the I6000 and the Microsoft MN-500 802.11B router, I can get approximately 150 feet. I have a 3MB DSL line and I use my I6000 about 50 feet from the router and I still max it out to the full bandwidth of my DSL connection.
BATTERY LIFE
My notebook like many others spends about 99.9% of its life wired.
I never did a full battery test on this unit. But from what I can gather I should be good for at least 3 hours with wireless on and surfing the net.
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
I called Dell tech about my AC power adapter as it was making a loud buzzing/squealing noise. As the rep went through his usual power up, power down, insert this, remove that routine he determined my adapter was defective. This was on a Thursday night, Monday 10am there was a new ac adapter at my door. This was my only tech support issue and I would rate it as very good.
OVERALL
I would say the I6000 is a good choice for anyone looking for the middle of the road notebook.
I think this would be ideal for a student, work, hobbyist or anyone needing a laptop for other reasons than gaming.
if anyone feels they have anything to add, please feel free to do so
