Simplify your laptop buying
- Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
15 out of 15 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Value portable"
Pros: Lighter than most laptops, bright and sharp widescreen, good battery life (with 8-cell battery)
Cons: Small fonts, weighs 2.1kg with 8-cell battery, only 2 USB ports
Summary: I bought this for US$1190 with 1.6GHz processor, 512MB RAM (free upgrade during a promotion), 40GB 5400rpm hard drive, and DVD-R/CD-RW combo drive. I didn't order any software upgrades, so it comes with the most basic set of productivity software (Windows XP Home + Microsoft Works). I haven't found any other laptops of similar weight and performance for under US$1300, so this is as good as it gets. I considered an Inspiron 6000 but decided weight was more important than having a new chipset which would be deprecated by the release of the dual-core mobile processors next year.
My first thought was that it was heavier than I expected. 2.1kg is much better than my previous laptop, but for the size of the 700m 2.1kg is fairly hefty. The 8-cell battery weighs 450g and the laptop itself only 1.65kg, so I suppose with the 4-cell battery you would get better weight. Still, I often need power for long periods, and a slightly heavier battery is better than being tied to a power socket. It's small and light enough to carry with one hand and type with the other, but you shouldn't expect to do this for extended periods of time (this is no tablet PC!)
The screen is sharp and bright, and the widescreen gives me plenty of room to work with. The small fonts put a bit of strain on my eyes, but if you have a utility to force font size to increase it shouldn't bother you that much. The screen is reflective, but under normal lighting conditions you shouldn't notice reflections of background objects.
I'm not exactly a touch typist and my hands aren't very large, so the small keyboard doesn't bother me (I type only with my index fingers and occassionally my other fingers, so if you're that kind of typist and your hands aren't big, the keyboard should be fine). My typing is somewhat slower than on a full-sized desktop keyboard, but it's not particularly frustrating. The exception is the removed pageup/pagedown keys, which I use quite a lot.
The boot-up of Windows XP is fast. I'd say it performs somewhat better than my 2.4GHz Northwood Pentium 4 desktop. If you get it with 512MB RAM you should be able to work quite comfortably with many applications open. The RAM is DDR not the newer DDR2, which is in a way good because DDR has faster access times but lower bandwidth (I don't need the speed and bandwidth very badly though).
There are only 2 USB ports, and they are inconveniently located at the left side of the notebook (so my mouse cable needs to snake over to the right side). If you're going to be using a USB printer to print data from your thumbdrive and use a USB mouse to perform these operations (or worse still if you have big hands and need a USB keyboard), you'll be in a bit of trouble.
There are a few bonuses not found on some ultraportables (though the 700m isn't exactly an ultraportable), such as an SDCard slot. I generally don't use these extras however.
3D performance is far from great, thanks to the integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2. My notebook scored 2401 on 3DMark2001, which isn't bad, but it won't play the latest games such as Half-Life 2. It's more than enough for some 3D games like Tux Racer though.
I won't comment on bundled software since I'm planning to install Linux.
Generally the Inspiron 700m is quite good, even with the aforementioned drawbacks. The price makes it even better (though you should wait until you can get it with 512MB RAM and 8-cell battery for under US$1200).
Get it if you meet the below criteria:
- 3kg desktop replacements strain your back
- You have medium/small hands (say 15mm-wide fingers?) and are not a superfast touchtypist
- You need lots of battery life and don't mind 2.1kg OR 2.5 hours of battery life is sufficient for you and a 1.8kg laptop will suit you
- You watch widescreen-format movies such as DVDs on the road
- You don't play the latest 3D games
- 2 USB ports will serve your needs
- You are not extremely concerned about having the newest Sonoma, GMA900 and DDR2 RAM
- You are on a budget, but not a shoestring budget
- You sometimes need to make presentations (in school?)
- You are not looking for a tablet-like gadget which allows you to write as you walk
- You understand that if you get it for the price I did, you won't get WinXP Pro OR MS Office.
