The best laptop below $1000 : Dell inspiron 5100

Dell inspiron 5100 : the betterment of inspiron 1000

Key Specs

• Processor manufacturer: Intel


• Processor model: Pentium 4


• Clock speed: 2.8 GHz


• RAM installed: 512 MB


• Wireless LAN: Dell TrueMobile 1180 WLAN Mini-PCI card (802.11b)


• Hard drive size: 40 GB


• Graphics processor: ATI Mobility Radeon 7500


• Graphics RAM: 32 MB


• Display diagonal size: 15 in


• Dimensions (W x H x D): 33.5x4.65x27.5 cm


• Weight: 3.69 kg


• Operating system: Windows XP Home


• Dell Inspiron 5100 battery OEM code : 312-0079
  

The Inspiron 5100's silver case and striking blue lid and mouse buttons herald a new look for Dell portables. Part of the company's high-performing desktop-replacement line, the Inspiron 5100 comes with a FireWire port, a 16MB or 32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 AGP graphics card (our review system had 32MB), and a Wi-Fi antenna. To complete the notebook's wireless setup, you'll have to pay $49 for an 802.11b/g Mini-PCI adapter.

Notebooks below $1,000 may grab your attention, but features can get a bit light. If you're willing to let the price float up a few hundred dollars, you'll get far more for your money. With the Dell Inspiron 5100 desktop replacement notebook ($1,456 direct, as tested), for instance, you get productivity software, decent multimedia abilities, and surprisingly good battery life.

Design:


A bit on the hefty side, the Inspiron 5100 weighs 8.1 pounds (not including its power adapter) and measures 1.9 inches thick. The Inspiron 5100's battery life, at 1 hour, 48 minutes in our tests, is far from impressive.
Equipped with Intel's 2.66-GHz Pentium 4 desktop processor, the Inspiron 5100 performed well for its price class, earning a PC WorldBench 4 score of 117. (We've tested relatively few notebooks with desktop processors, but the closest competitor for the Inspiron is a Toshiba Satellite 2455-S305 equipped with a 2.4-GHz chip; it, too, earned a score of 117.) Currently, the 5100 can also be had with a 2.4-GHz or a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4.Our review unit had a 15-inch screen with a 1400 by 1050 resolution; the notebook can be configured with a 14-inch screen, as well. The large keyboard has quiet, steady action, but boasts few extras--just a power button and one programmable quick-launch button at the top. You can't miss the Inspiron 5100's mouse buttons; they're bright blue and twice normal size. Like mouse buttons on too many notebooks, though, the 5100's are rather stiff. Audio was somewhat disappointing: The stereo speakers are loud but slightly buzzy at their highest volume, and the 5100 has no physical volume control--you must use the Windows volume slider. All of the 5100's removable components--the battery pack, memory slots, and hard drive--are easy to access. To remove the hard drive, you simply remove two small screws on the bottom of the notebook and pull it out by its cover plate. We received a preproduction copy of the notebook's user manual; it thoroughly covered parts, troubleshooting, and upgrades, with nice drawings. The help screens provide mostly generic information about the notebook's hardware, and are not specific to the 5100. Dell inspiron 5100 battery is Li-ion, 14.8v.

Features

Dell provides a long list of options for the Inspiron 5100 so you can configure it to suit your budget. The desktop Pentium 4 processors come in speeds ranging from 2.4GHz to 2.8GHz. Fast, 266MHz DDR SDRAM is available from 128MB up to 1GB. The ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chips come with either 16MB or 32MB of dedicated video memory. Hard drive choices consist of 30GB and 40GB units. Display options range 14.1in. with a native resolution of 1,024 by 768 pixels, to 15in. at a graphics-friendly 1,400 by 1,050 pixels. You can choose among CD-RW, DVD and DVD/CD-RW drives to fill the system's internal fixed bay. The system we tested included a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, 512MB of RAM, a 32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chip and a 40GB hard drive spinning at 5,400rpm. The 6600mAh Inspiron 5100 battery is powerful and rechargeable can work in 14.8v.

With the included MusicMatch Jukebox 7.1 (called Dell Jukebox), Roxio Easy CD Creator 5, and Jasc Image Expert 2000 (rebranded Dell Picture Studio), you're adequately set up for tasks involving music and photos. But beyond its FireWire port, our 5100 was less suited for video editing—there's only a 30GB hard drive, no video software other than the clunky Microsoft Windows MovieMaker 1.1, and no writable DVD drive option.

Performance & Dell Inspiron 5100 battery life


The 2.8GHz Inspiron 5100 showed impressive speed in our performance tests, while battery life was reasonable considering the power of this system’s desktop CPU.


The Dell Inspiron 5100 delivered record-breaking scores of 59.5 and 42.4 respectively under the application-based Business Winstone 2001 and Content Creation Winstone 2002 tests, beating Compaq’s workstation-class 2.2GHz Evo 800w by a clear margin.



The system performed pretty well in our battery life tests, lasting for 2 hours 38 minutes under BatteryMark 4.01 and 2 hours 42 minutes under MobileMark 2002. The Inspiron 5100's hefty 6,450mAh battery obviously has its work cut out when handling a high-speed 2.8GHz processor and a 15in. display, but anything over 2.5 hours isn't bad at all.

The Inspiron 5100 doesn't have the most inspired design we've seen, but it's a fine, relatively basic desktop replacement with good performance as its main attraction. For the price, the Inspiron 5100 is a good deal, and you're better served by picking the more fully equipped model than the $1,099 entry-level model. Conversely, those who do little more than Web browsing, e-mailing, and word processing can save $200 with the $899 Celeron-based Inspiron 1100.