First new Vista purchase - value ?

zod

Buying this for a user who will use it for internet browsing, watching DVDs and playing music.

Must have vista ( do not query this )

value for money ?

Inspiron 1501 (N02157)
Date & Time: Saturday 27 January 2007 12:49 PM
Inspiron 1501 (N02157) Qty 1
AMD® Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL50, Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Base AMD® Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL50
Microsoft Operating System Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Memory 1024MB 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x512)
Keyboard Internal Keyboard - (QWERTY) - UK/Ireland
Video Card ATI Radeon® Xpress 1150 256MB HyperMemory™
Hard Drive 80GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive
Mouse Dell USB Black Optical Mouse
Modem 56.6k V.92 Capable Internal Modem & Adapter
CD/DVD Drives Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including Software
Wireless Local Area Networking Dell Wireless 1490 Dual Band 802.11a/b/g 54Mbps Mini-PCI Wireless Card33
Microsoft Application Software Microsoft® Works 8.5 - English
Standard Warranty Collect & Return, 90 Days Service only
Power Supply 65W AC Adapter
Primary Battery 6 Cell, 56Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Dell System Media Kit Inspiron Resource DVD - Vista (Diagnostics & Drivers)
LCD 15.4" Wide Screen XGA TFT Display: 1280x800


Total Price € 665.52 ( including VAT and delivery )

mick.fr

Quiet a crappy laptop, but for 660 euros can not expect much...
For a thousand you would have much better. You should also forget about AMD, Dual Core is far more better, use less energy and heat less.

8T8

For

internet browsing, watching DVDs and playing music

it is perfectly fine I have the same notebook in fact I'm about to load Vista Premium on it later this afternoon.

The Turion X2 is an dual core CPU mick.fr is misinformed. The Turions are low power binned Athlon 64's so they run fine for notebooks and is more than enough for the tasks outlined.

Everything looks okay with the spec you might want to pick up a USB memory stick to enable Vista Readyboost as it gives a nice free performance boost. It should be generally at least equal to the same size of RAM in the machine so this Crucial Gizmo 1GB would do the job.

Ideally in the future someone will come out with an Expresscard with some flash on it to enable Readyboost so you do not have to have the USB stick hanging off the back or side of the machine.

zod

mick.fr wrote:

Quiet a crappy laptop, but for 660 euros can not expect much...
For a thousand you would have much better. You should also forget about AMD, Dual Core is far more better, use less energy and heat less.

I'm quite interested in how the browsing, DVD viewing and mp3 listening experience would be better with a dual core, please explain.

Or are you just revealing to us that €1,000 would buy a better laptop?

ressem

You might want to pick up a USB memory stick to enable Vista Readyboost as it gives a nice free performance boost. It should be generally at least equal to the same size of RAM in the machine so this Crucial Gizmo 1GB would do the job.

Since it's a Dell laptop, it might be worth experimenting with the flash memory Media Bay. Perhaps an SD card or Compactflash could work in the same manner, without getting in the way, for those trying to eak out a bit more performance. But not till your laptop starts crawling at startup in a year or so.

8T8

ressem wrote:

Since it's a Dell laptop, it might be worth experimenting with the flash memory Media Bay. Perhaps an SD card or Compactflash could work in the same manner, without getting in the way, for those trying to eak out a bit more performance. But not till your laptop starts crawling at startup in a year or so.

I have not tested SD Cards with Readyboost or seen anyone else but I do have a 2GB SD Card I will test on the Inspiron 1501 & see if it actually works once I load Vista on it.

The Readyboost acts as a cache between the HD & RAM, Vista learns what you use most and copies it into the cache so you get a perf boost no matter what your doing.

Edit: Update finished installing Vista Premium on the 1501 and in summary it runs just as good as XP did if not slightly better & my 1501 is a lower spec model with Sempron CPU & only 512MB of RAM with the GPU stealing 64MB for itself. Unfortunately my SD Card (Corsair brand) was not compatible with Readyboost so I was unable to test it but clearly some are. Also Vista turned off the Glass Aero effect while still using the Aero UI to save system resources or the driver for the Xpress 200 isn't compatible yet (it is a full DX9 GPU).

Anyway it is running fine on the notebook no problems at all.

BrendanD

I bought one of these for my father in law , perfect for casual use .