Dell Inspiron 8600 - Page 2

I've had mine since early November and it still runs like a champ. I just upgraded my memory to 1GB and it flies. Moreso than before. All is well and I love it.

Maybe more specific questions for us 8600 owners to answer?

I just got 512 Megs of ram in the 8600 I ordered, upgrading to 1Gig was expensive. I figured it would be cheaper in a few months to buy 1gig of ram then in another year or so buy another 1 gig stick when its even cheaper so I will have a full 2 gigs!

Ohh yeah, I have a question? Hows the WUXGA screen? Have any pixels went dead or gotten stuck? Any ghosting problems?

I paid a tad under $200. More than what I wanted to pay but the performance gains are awesome.

If the WUXGA was a wide-angle screen, then it'd be the best screen EVER! lol. As is, it's a pretty damn good screen. Nice and clear, no dead pixels either. I've been playing Call of Duty on this and I haven't noticed any ghosting. I love the extra real estate but I'd have to say my old Sager 5670 UXGA had the best screen I've seen.

I miss the wide-angle but now I'm able to stack window upon window and still have room for my AIM windows. I'm a chat-whore.

I just got my 8600 and noticed that images in Internet Explorer look messed up. I am assuming it has something to do with the wide screen aspect ratio. Does anyone know if there is a setting to fix this ?

draklava, change your DPI to 96. I don't know why the factory sets it at 120, the graphics on webpages look horrendous. I'm not sure where you can change it, it's somewhere in the display settings. Oh, and make sure you restart... the change doesn't take place until you do (at least, that's how I remember it being)

Ok thanks... I just did a reinstall of XP Pro and I can't find drivers for anything. there is a driver CD that came with the laptop but seems to be missing divers for the ATI 9600 and others.

How did you guys get the drivers after you installed? This is really pissing me off!

All dell drivers are available on the Dell Support page just list your Model or Service tag and all the most recent drivers will be displayed

right click desktop
settings
advanced
DPI Setting, change it to 96

HTH

Are there anythings I should look for when speaking with the Cust.Rep when ordering, so as to get more for my money (or the right package for my money)? In other words, when you all ordered your I8600, was there anything that you mentioned in order to get a better deal, the same you might recommend others to ask? I believe "Juicyfruit" mention that she "fudged" up her order, she wanted the b/g card but instead got the 802.11b. Was that the result of ordering online w/o a cust. rep? Thanks for posting, everyone. You've been very helpful. I'll keep checking back.

It was all my fault, really. I thought that the b/g was not internal.

It's pretty plain and simple when ordering. Just make sure the price is what you thought it was after you're done.

That's about it.

I configured mine over the web and found some coupons at techbargains.com at the last minute which knocked the price down. It is a great lappy so far although my poor eyes are trying to get used to the WUXGA resolution!

It is not bad for documents and stuff but some web pages with bitmap font graphics (as opposed to html text) come through small and text entry boxes and other GUI controls are smaller.

I was a bit panicked yesterday about stuff not working but I think I've made my way through most those issues! Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.

Just got my 8600 with SXGA+..... SAMSUNG!

What's up everyone?

Received my 8600 a couple of weeks ago. I'm happy! I'm been becoming familiar with it, and trying out some of the recommended games that are compatible with the 128MB ATI Radeon 9600Pro Turbo Video card. I also enjoy having the 1400 a/b/g card too... AWESOME. However, I seemed to have lost the volume meter, the one that appears on the screen when you use the volume buttons. Is there any way to enable it so that it appears again? I've tried the Dell Quick Set options, but I can only get the screen brightness meter to show. Somewhere in my "fooling around" I disabled the volume meter and now I can't get it to show. Let me know what you think it is.

My specs:

8600 Pentium M, 1.7GHz 15.4 WUXGA
512 MB DDR, 333 MHz, 2 Dim
60GB (7200rpm) ATA ultra HD
DVD+RW

Dell Inspiron 8600 SUCKS!

Just thought I would tell the forum a little horror story.

It starts off by me checking out this Gateway M505X Notebook that Gateway is selling for 1499.99. Here In Oregon we have a Gateway Direct Store so I went in there and asked if they had any student discounts and they said no but they do offer AAA at 7% which takes the price down to 1395.99. So I decided to call Dell and get a quote on their comperable system the Inspiron 8600 and although they couldn't match Gateway's price they told me for 1411.00 I would get WUXGA 1.4 Pentium M; 512MB Ram; 64MB NVidia; 60GIG Ultra; and 1 year ON SITE SUPPORT.... GREAT PRICE RIGHT? So verified the contents of the puter about 10 times because I couldn't believe they were going to give me all that for 1411.00. I bought it... next day I went to Dell's website and punched in the order number and low and behold what was ordered was a WXGA screen with 1 year Mail in Support. So I called Dell and spoke with the sales rep and he corrected the problem delaying my arrival date by five days. Here is where the story gets fun! My new notebook arrives and of course I am excited to get it so I pull it out of the box plug it in, charge it for 12 hours come back to it and it boots into safe mode and then crashes before I could click on CONTROL PANEL. When I went to start it back up all I got was a blinking cursor that wouldn't go away, so I powered it off and turned it back on where I got this rapidly blinking blue screen of death where the text was unrecognizable. So I jumped on the internet with my home pc and did a little research and found that NVidia's 64mb card has problems and doesn't work well with the WUXGA screen so I proceeded to tell Dell that the replacement system they were going to send me would be one of a different configuration... Dell said no... told me my money would be refunded in 6 weeks and sorry for the inconvenience. And finally after many hours of haggling with Dell they finally agreed to build me a system of my choice for 1411.00 but wouldn't be able to build it till they verified the doorstop they sent me was back in their posession and my money was returned (6 weeks) I told the manager, "Dude, your startin' to smell". I have been faithful to them throughout the years with my computing needs but honestly I will never buy from them again... Gateway M505X is a MUCH better machine. And I assure you I am not a Gateway fanboy by any stretch. DELL has stunk it up and lost my future business and anyone else that knows me and trusts my advise on computers.

sounds like a frustrating experience

I guess if you plan on keeping this notebook for a while you won't remember the annoyances in a couple months when you are enjoying the better specs that should have cost a lot more!

Every company (especially bigger companies like gateway and dell) sell thousands of quality stuff with no problems and hundreds of "nighmare scenarios" where some customer gets pullled through the ringer.

Hope it all works out for you

That's true

I definately agree with you but I have already sent my system back because Dell has agreed to give me a new Inspiron 8600 1.7ghz Pentium M 512MB Ram; 128mb ATI; 60gig etc... for the same price... but after looking at the quality of the Gateway M505X compared with the Inspiron 8600 there is NO comparison... Gateway WINS...

???
There is no comparison on the specs -- Inspiron WINS...

Pixlated screen on Inpiron 8600

The pixilated screen on my 8600 bothered me as well, and I eventually figured it out - the problem is with Internet Explorer! I makes some text and pictures look really bad, so I tried another browser like opera and Netcaptor, and now everything on the internet looks as good as the icons and native text. I recoomend everyone to get a new browser, and make it your default. I prefer netcaptor b/c it integrates and imports IE settings and favorites perfectly, as well as having many other advanced features like tabs, etc.

www.opera.com

www.netcaptor.com