Fast unreliable beast. like Ford GT of laptops. (Dell Inspiron 5100)

Member Name: kamal

Product:	Dell Inspiron 5100
Date:	30/05/08 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: FAST, Really Fast, Lot of resources on the internet to resolve any issues

Disadvantages: Sound quality, Bit heavy at 3.5 KG, Dell restore eats up 5 GB disk space

The advantage of buying Dell laptop is that they can go wrong quite often, and when lot of people face problems, they first resolve the issue and put the solution on the web. If you search on the web for Dell Inspiron 5100 / 5150, you get lots of posts with various issue. The main issues are overheating and shutting down with slightest shake.
I bought my Inspiron 5150 from Dell outlet at 50% of original price, not realising what am I getting into. It worked like a treat for couple of years as I watched DVDs and created movies using Pinnacle Studio. I was bit disappointed with the speaker sound though.
Then this heavy beast started slowing down with heavy fan noise and I thought that it is due to old age. I searched on the web and found step by step solution to clean heat sink to avoid this problem. But could not gather the courage to open the heat sink.
Then I hit the next big issue. It shuts down at slightest pressure on the palm rest. The internet forums came to rescue again. It has to do with some C-tab putting pressure on some specific circuit. I opened the computer, took a deep breath and touched all pins of circuit with very very hot kitchen knife. And the problem was solved.
After few months, I noticed that I can't even surf as it gets really hot. So, I opened the laptop last week and removed dust and fluff from the heat sink. That worked like a treat again. and my laptop is working as cool and fast as new !!
After 3.5 years of buying Inspiron 5150 3.2 GHz, I own the fastest consumer (not gaming etc) laptop around in year 2008 !! As most of the programs run on single core, we don't generally have a single core working at more than 2.2 GHz.

Summary: Powerful laptop of past years which can still beat the current lot. But has some basic design flaws.

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