B120 First Impressions

Hey everyone...first post, been lurking for about a month.

Anyway, I picked up a B120 after my Black Friday adventures came up empty. I ordered on the 25th and it came in the mail yesterday, the 29th, so it shipped pretty fast. The configuration is as follows:

Intel Celeron M 360 (1.4 GHz/1MB)
512 MB DDR2 SDRAM
40GB 5400rpm HD
14.1" WXGA Display
DVD/CD-RW Drive
6.2 lbs. ~1.4" thick

The B120 is Dell's new budget laptop set to replace the Inspiron 1200. With a $20 off coupon, the final total came out to $410+tax+$49 shipping = ~$497.

For a non-glossy display, the B120's 14.1" screen is actually pretty good. The only thing that irked me at first was that since the laptop was made to accomodate a 15.4" screen, there's an ugly bezel around the screen. Nevertheless, the screen is plenty bright, clear (I heard reports of people saying Dell's 1280x800 screens generated blurry images - none of that hear) and devoid of any dead pixels. Can't wait to watch DVDs on this thing.

What surprised me is that for the cost, the performance is actually quite decent for a budget laptop. For basic tasks (and a little bit more if you dare), the Celeron M 360 1.4GHz processor is plenty fast, especially when paired with the 512MB of DDR2 RAM. I used SuperPI to calculate PI to 2 million digits, and this laptop clocked in at 2m14s!

Hopefully I can turn this into a full review, but at this point I need to spend more time with the laptop and see if any other problems arise. I can say though that the B120 is definitely a solid budget laptop.

 

awesome, thanks for the first impressions variant. I'm getting the B130 to try out soon, you can't beat the price on these machines. The bezel on the 14-inch is definitely going to be a bit ugly, that's why I went with the more expensive 15-inch B130, but hey you saved $.

Definitely check back and let us know more on how things are going with it.

 

Glad to hear the B120 worked out. I can't wait to get mine too. Do you have any idea what speed the RAM is?

 

i need asome pics i cant waitto see what it looks like other than the dell pictures

 

It uses PC4200.

 

Pictures, you say? Here's a few.





There's a couple more if you click here.

BTW abaxter, the thing with the B120 screens is that you're stuck with the 14" screen no matter what. They don't give you an option to upgrade, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't.

 

!!!!!!!!!! thanks sooo much! it looks great! but it also looks kinda big... like, from top to bottem. Also, hows the touchpad... can you take a pic of that top view. Thats would be awsome. Sorry im asking your for soo much but, im excited lol

 

Very cool, thanks for posting this.

Looks like a decent notebook, much better than the i2200.

A shame it has the large benzel around the entire screen...I'll make a note to recommend getting the 15.4".

 

Hi,

I received mine yesterday, It suck that they don't ship the system restore cd , instead they are useing my 3GB hard disk space for the system recovery.

an other thing is the PCIMCA slot , I cant figure it out what it is because it is not standred I can't put my wireless card from my other laptop. any idea ?

//Kashif

 

that's odd, they must be using an ExpressCard slot -- the new standard for slot upgrades (I'm assuming this, can't confirm as I don't have the B130 yet). There aren't many ExpressCard accessories out right now so most manufacturers that put ExpressCards on a notebook also put an old PCMCIA type card slot on there too -- the ExpressCard slot is actually cheaper for manufacturers so you'll see more of a move to that. You can call Dell and request a Restore CD for $10 if you do it within 30-days of purchase, or make your own recovery CD and get rid of the partition. Everyone is doing this same thing that Dell does now.

 

hmm, okay thanks for the info and pics variant. everyone approve add rep points to variant for his post and posting of pictures

 

200-pin SODIMM Logical Type: 32x64 Speed: PC2-4200 / 533 MHz

Also, there is no PCMCIA slot in the new b120/130 only an Express Card slot.

My wife was going to stand in line @ Walmart for a Black friday lappy I told her it wasn't worth it. I ended up ordering her a b120 for $449 w/ 512MB, free wireless and I upgraded the free printer for $30. Minus $20 for paypal I'd say we made off pretty good in the deal.

I don't understand how you could've ordered the same laptop as me but not recieved the free wireless...

 

I thought that there was some way to burn your own once.

 

I did get the same laptop, and I do have the wireless, I just didn't think it was worth mentioning.

 

My Inspiron 630m does not let you burn a recovery disk! I visted the site:
http://support.dell.com/pcrt

And it mentions that you can only burn recovery disks on system bought between Jan 2005 and July 15, 2005. After that, you have to use PC Restore program.

 

Great pics. Congradulations on the machine.

 

The video options on the inspiron b120 are from 8mb up to 128mb. It has to be easy, but can anyone tell me how to change the settings? I need 64mb just to run a simple game and can't find the right menu to opt for more from the shared memory. Thank you