The Dell Inspiron 1520 is one of the most popular laptops right now. When you shop online at Dell, there are a few things to keep in mind. The first thing to note is that “Deals of the Week” change offers and sometimes it is better to wait for the next week. Some weeks it might be an extra 1 Gb of free RAM or an upgraded hard drive, other times it might be a $100 discount or a free Bluetooth mouse or Targus bag. Depending on the special, it may be better to wait for a better deal. For example, a $100 discount on a separate monitor may not be as useful as more RAM in the laptop, unfortunately it’s a bit of a risk since you don’t know what’s coming your way. Dell provides the date the agreement ends, so you may need to act before this date.
Don’t buy RAM or hard drives from Dell…unless they’re on sale. They are more expensive than buying outside. For the same price as the hard drive upgrade, you keep the hard drive on the stock Inspiron version and buy a new 160Gb 7200 RPM hard drive from a third party and still have a few spare changes. By the way, Vista eats up RAM like never before, so it’s worth getting at least 2Gb, especially if you’re going to have Aero enabled.
Sometimes they offer Creative SoundBlaster Audigy. This is NOT hardware and just an application CD that gives the chipset additional features. Really useful stuff like bathroom reverb or something. The chipset is still listed as SIGMATEL STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio and NOT SoundBlaster Audigy.
Oh another thing The DELlay. It’s all over the Interweb. There have been massive delays in the Inspiron color order process. It looks like they are arriving now, but sometimes the order specifically mentions a 6-8 week delay for certain colors. Unless you ask for Black or White (sometimes without the webcam), you may have to wait. This is apparently because the spraying process is similar to that of a car and is a very slow procedure. Whites that look more available than blues or greens actually have more coats of paint on them because they have a glossy sheen. Unfortunately, no other color has this glossy coating. Also, the color is only applied to the lid of the laptop, everything else, including the keyboard, is silver, and the bottom is black. Obviously, these delays don’t deter Dell from continuing to advertise the Inspiron, which creates further delays for customers.
Choose the Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo processor? If you can afford it, go for the Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0Ghz and above. They obviously have a faster clock speed with a front side bus (FSB) of 800 MHz compared to 667 MHz on the T5450 1.66 Ghz. They also have 4MB cache instead of 2MB which makes all the difference.
The 15.4″ WXGA+ 1440×900 widescreen with Truelife is worth going for. The resolution is sharp and not too small. The 1680×1050 option might be overkill as the monitor is too small for that resolution (many 20 monitors ,1″ have that resolution). Also, LCD screens look best at their native resolution, so gaming and having to lower the resolution won’t look good. The LCD screen is the glossy type that appears to be easier to erase than matte ones, but is more prone to reflections. Think carefully before buying a 17″ version. They’re heavy, and you can sometimes get a 15.4″ and a separate Dell 17″ monitor for about the same price.
The Dell Inspiron 1520 as a gaming laptop.
Well, it’s actually pretty good (for a laptop). The Nvidia 8600m GT works quite well, it has 256mb GDDR2. You also can’t use shared RAM to increase graphics RAM. There are some discussions online that some come with GDDR3, but to be sure, Asus G1 and G2 have GDDR3 but are much more expensive. If you have money to burn, there’s also the Toshiba X205 with the 8700M GT. Strangely, the so-called Dell Gaming Notebook, the XPS series, currently does not have the Geforce 8 series and goes up only to the Geforce Go 7950 GTX, which is really puzzling. However, there is less waiting time on an XPS. The 7950 GTX is actually more powerful than the 8600 GT, but it only has the DX9 code path compared to the 8 series DX10. As mentioned before, the 8600M GT would struggle with newer games at 1680×1050 resolution and DX10 games would choke. The Inspiron gets reasonably hot when playing hard, you can feel warm air being pushed out through the side vents. Good in winter as a fan heater.
Replacing Vista with XP
This is a real world of pain. Until Vista SP1 comes around, I want to get all the performance of the Inspiron, and Vista just isn’t enough. At the time I bought mine, they didn’t offer XP, but have recently started now. It was Vista Home Basic or Home Premium. Forceware Nvidia drivers for 8 series from Nvidia website DO NOT work. There are only now 8 series drivers for XP on the Dell website. Before this, there was a good hacked version here: http://www.tweakforce.com
The Creative/SigmaTel audio driver is worse. Very hard to find and SigmaTel is not supported by the public so it’s up to Dell. So after trying a few that were supposed to work I finally found one on the Dell website http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid =R153908&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=205136 from the Dell Community site. This does not appear in the list of XP drivers in the Dell Inspiron driver downloads.
When booting an XP CD, it immediately crashed with a PCI.SYS error. Then I had to Slipstream on a build of XP with SP2. After that I had to add Dell SATA drivers to the image. Then download almost all other drivers from the Dell site. Maybe they have fixed it now with the inclusion of XP.
The good
A really cheap laptop for the components you get and one of the best gaming laptops available.
The build quality is quite good.
Pretty.
You get what you ordered online virtually delivered with Dell. I had nothing missing or the wrong hardware.
Delivery tracking is reasonably accurate and I manage to get it a day before the expected arrival date.
Dell’s Service Tag is a nice feature and allows you to enter your laptop’s service tag on their website, which will display your hardware details.
There is plenty of documentation, driver CDs and DVDs.
You get the actual DVD for the operating system.
The BIOS is not that bad (for Dell), there are quite a few options. But it seems that you can’t adjust the CPU or RAM in any way. So there is no OC.
The WiFi seems pretty good, it has three built-in antennas. There’s also a slider that turns off WiFi if it’s not needed. You also get Bluetooth.
There are some speaker and playback buttons on the front panel that are quite convenient. The sound of the laptop itself is quite good.
The keyboard is pretty good, if a bit cramped considering the size of the laptop. It’s not too spongy and they seem to clip on pretty well compared to some of the Lenovo ThinkPads that have little clips if the keys accidentally fall off.
The Targus bag for little money.
The bad
The DELLay in certain colors.
Expect delivery when ordering online on a normal day.
The initial build of the Inspiron 1520, which was Vista Home Basic, is full of bloatware. Like Google Desktop search and Norton’s Anti-Virus with a limited subscription.
Dell XP driver support is all over the place. Maybe they fixed it now by selling it with XP, I don’t know.
Your 120 Gb or 160 Gb hard drive is divided into three partitions at the factory. One hidden recovery and one C: and D:. The D: has some drivers and a recovery to get Windows to reinstall to factory defaults. Gross.
If you want a Track Point, you’ll need to go for the Lattitude series (in the Business option) or shell out good money for a ThinkPad. With the Inspire you’re stuck with a heating pad. I personally don’t like them, but some do.
The Dell Inspiron is quite heavy and, coupled with the large power supply, is borderline for lugging a backpack around all day as a student.
The ugly one
Black looks too simple. When you buy an Inspiron you have to get a colored one (if you can stand the wait)!