Vostro 2520 BTX..........junk

Well, I was in the market for a new, not so expensive laptop to be used pretty much only for net surfing, videos, etc. No gaming, no number crunching apps, no graphics, etc.
So asked around a bit, including in these forums, and decided on the entry level vostro.
I didn't expect it to be as nice or as fast as my 3 year old MBP which has an i5 processor.
But even with its lower end celeron processor, I figured with Windows 7 and 2GB ram, it shouldn't have any probs opening basic apps quickly and surfing the web.

So very disappointed in this. Things that are bothering me:
- painfully long boot time. At least twice as long as my MBP, which is also booting into Win7 via bootcamp
- Very long to start apps like Firefox. Literally sitting there for 10 seconds before anything pops up
- Terrible viewing angles on the screen. If the screen is not tilted just right, it looks like a 2 inch dark shadow across the screen. And that 'just right' angle doesn't even seem to be head on.....weird.
- I use the trackpad on my laptops. The one on this feels fine, and the buttons feel fine, but windows doesn't seem to recognize the click unless you press quite hard on them. It will feel like the button has actuated, but just won't register unless there is a lot of pressure. Very aggravating.
- The wireless connection is bad. Much slower than the other laptops in the house, and the connection seems to drop once in a while. Again, no issues with the other laptops, some much older, in the house.

Again, I wasn't expecting this laptop to match a 2k laptop, but my 12 year old inspiron laptop (8600? Forget) running XP literally runs much faster and has a much nicer screen....makes no sense.

Calling Dell today to return this.

 

Your major problem is RAM. 2 GB is not enough for windows 7, you need at least 4 GB to run windows as well as apps, ideally 6 GB. You can get RAM very cheap from Newegg or Amazon. As for the other issues, unfortunately thats what you get from buying cheap nowadays. Brands no longer give you quality you deserve unless you drop $1000 on a machine.

 

I have a dell XPS 1330 (6+ years old?) running windows 7, with 1GB ram I believe, works way faster than this new Vostro.
Same with my Macbook pro. i5 processor and 2GB ram, -way- faster.
So the diff there is the i5 vs the celeron I guess, but I didn't think something like firefox, and surfing the net, was really that dependent on the processor...
Anyway, Dell Canada was very easy to deal with over the phone this morning, so props to them for that, already have my return shipping slip.

 

I have a feeling that the problem was more with the stock Dell install and that 2 GB of RAM not playing nice together (factory installs got more and more bloated as RAM capacity increased). You likely also had a 5.4K RPM drove as well which didn't help things. My atom tablet sounds faster than what you described and that is running on 2 GB and it's running an atom which is bottom of the barrel.

As for the display, I understand your pain, usually, if it is 1366x768, you it will be crap (notable exception to the ThinkPad X series). Apple uses decent displays, usually 60-75% NTSC gamut with decent viewing angles, props to them for that.

 

I got a vostro 2520 and the wifi network connection keeps dropping. the wifi router is fine as other machines in my home network work just fine. I have checked the power options for wifi adapter and device manager functionality.in the system for the wifi adapter. it is set to "do not let windows turn off this device". But it still keeps dropping the wifi network.