Inspiron...Inspiring!! !! (Dell Inspiron 2650)

Member Name: superdez

Product:	Dell Inspiron 2650
Date:	03/04/04 (1486 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reliable, user friendly, clever

Disadvantages: not many USB ports

I have had this laptop for 2 years now and can judge this beauty fairly. It has upset me, and has made me happy and when I remove it from my desk, the room somehow seems empty.

When I bought this laptop, it was top of its range. DVD-CD/RW combo, 20 giga hard drive memory. 256 mb ram and so on. As time went by however I realised the disadvantages of a laptop when it comes to performance.

The graphics card is not really upgradeable, so I am forever stuck with a nvidea 32 mb graphics card. It wasn't bad two years ago, but these sort of things get outdated pretty quickly, so it is not my laptops fault.

The processeor isn't slow, but now there are much faster ones, once again I can't blame Dell.

Hardware is easy to install, but not so easy to run....let me explain. This laptop, and I think all of its series comes with only 2 USB drives, and almost everything nowadays relies on USB. So considering you get a free printer when buying the laptop, and chances are that your mouse is a USB powered device, does this mean I can use no other USB powered device, such as a scanner or digital camera? The answer strictly speaking is yes. Unless you buy a USB hub, which would increase the number of USB ports available to you, the Dell Inspiron is very limited when it comes to its versatility with external and internal hardware. When it comes to internal hardware, this is relatively understandable, but there is space behind there to add more USB drives, however I am not a computer designer so I will not pretend to be one.

Another glitch I have noticed through time is a non-responsive keyboard. This has only happened to me once in two years, but I have come to learn that with proper maintenance this does not happen. I have to commend Dell for their excellent customer service. When I purchased this laptop I was living in Italy, I now currently live in the UK. This laptop came with the usual owners handbook etc, which I usually thro
w away. Dell took the time and insight to write on the front cover DO NOT THROW AWAY. IMPORTANT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE...so I kept it. The guidebook contains all the numbers I will ever need for whatever country I am in. When my keyboard did become unresponsive I picked the guidebook up, and clearly labelled and simple to understand was the number I would need to call for the UK. The customer service was very friendly, patient and helpful. He told me what to do, explained why the fault occurred, what procedures and maintenance would be required to avoid similar problems in the future.

The laptop itself might be considered to be a bit on the chunky side for a laptop, but I prefer to use the term sturdy. It is not big, maybe bigger than the smaller ones, but it is not big, it fits in all briefcases, bags, satchels etc..(OK not handbags). What I am trying to get to however is that the inspiron 2650 looks as good now as it did when I bought it. None of the finishings have worn off. No portions have become weak, non of the surfaces are a bit flimsy. The machine is a sturdy piece of art which seems willing to survive anything you throw at it.

It very conveniently comes with a network card, and behaves perfectly well with my broadband connection, and it is notorious that laptops tend to wrestle quite a bit with broadband connections...but not my Dell inspiron, it just went right to work.

The 20 gb of memory seems to be a bit small now, however this depends on how you use your laptop and what you use it for. Do remember that Windows XP will take up approximately 1.5 gb if not more, so you're actual memory space will be slightly inferior to that stated.

DVD writers are now on the market fairly cheaply and I would really like to have one. Even though my current DVD-CD/RW has NEVER EVER failed to deliver, the lack of USB does make it very tiresome for me to use and enjoy external hardware. But nevertheless I must commend the performance of
the DVD-CD/RW. The software it has come with is not exactly the best out there, nevertheless, when installing the other progams, there have never been issues of the writer not being recognised or refusing to respond. I have several writer programs installed and they all work in harmony. Something rarely seen in desktops.

The mouse pad is touch sensitive but still rather smart. It has a clever feature, whereby if I am in Internet exploere or word, if I just move my finger up or down on the very right of the pad and it scrolls the page, avoiding me the painstaking hassle of having to sweep my finger repetitively to tap that scroll button.....very very sweet.

I don't know if I've missed anything but I do recommend this computer to anyone. I believe I have mentioned all the issues about its everyday use...if you have any questions I would be pleased to answer them if I can on the comment board.

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