Nice little laptop, but nothing special (Dell Inspiron 1525)

Member Name: kiss_me_now9

Product:	Dell Inspiron 1525
Date:	28/09/09 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy and lightweight for transport, good for typing notes etc.

Disadvantages: Can feel a bit 'cheap', not that durable, somewhat limited in uses

I've owned this laptop since May 2008, it was bought as an 18th birthday present to me.

Overall, almost a year and a half later, it's not in too bad a shape, but there are a few main issues that I have found with it (and I have also found not to be isolated to this model or to my experiences). Looks wise I went for a coloured outercover which has held up beautifully and when wiped down looks like the day it arrived; inside however the silver has worn away from the side of the mouse pad and the speaker grill has become hard to clean leading to stains and things trapped in it.

One such thing is the quality of the materials used to make this laptop. The laptop itself is very lightweight, which is good for transportation but not so good when you consider that the screen flips up a little too easily and several times I have had to stop myself from snapping it. The keyboard, whilst looking very smart, has started to cause me problems with keys falling off and not going back on properly, and sometimes a letter will stop working completely - For the entire duration of having the laptop on. Once it's rebooted, as long as the key has been cleaned, it works fine, but again I find it more difficult than it should be to put the keys back in place.

Battery wise the power does not seem to last well without being attached to the mains, I suppose this is true of many laptops though and not isolated at all to this make or model. One minor annoyance I find is that if you unplug the laptop, it immediately goes into 'power saver' mode, which essentially means that your screen is dimmed permenantly and even if you bring the brightness back to the highest level, once you leave the laptop idle for more than 5 minutes it dims down again.

Personally I have not had any major hardware problems, apart from not being able to play games on it - but then again, the 1525 is not sold as a gaming laptop so I consider this to be somewhat of a moot point. It occasionally has moments where it decides it doesn't want to turn on though!

The 1525 has some nice little features, I have an inbuilt webcam on mine (optional, but well used!) which is great for keeping in touch with family and friends especially when used with Skype or a similar phone call programme. The picture quality is good and it's easy to use - and very hard to put on mistakenly! Another feature that I enjoy is the soft touch volume/music control buttons, I have found that the mute button does not always respond instantly first time but the rest do and it makes a nice change from pressing keys or clicking. It would be nice to have a volume 'dial' but that's my personal preference.

Overall it's a nice little laptop, perfect for university or college work but not if you want it for anything too serious!

EDIT -
My laptop died about two weeks after writing this review, and after several weeks of contact with Dell, it's still not fixed. The hard drive has died and it won't turn on.

Summary: Overall a decent laptop but not one that I would want to buy again - system is not amazing.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Installation:
Battery life:
Features: