But but but, the inspiron 1505 seeems so WELL BUILT ??

The general opinion on all boards is that Inspirons are crappily built, fall apart on touching, creak like crazy etc.

I have in my hands a brand new Inspiron 1505, and it seems to be very well built. Palm rest is absolutely solid - like my precision M90, IBM T30.
Screen lid has more flex than the M90, but still better than the thinkpads.
No creak whatsoever.
1000 times better than my 6 yeaar old sony vaio which has got to be the worst laptop ever built.

So why the Dell bashing in general ? Only thing I can imagine is high impact situations, if u drop the laptop, then "strength" of materials(which I'm not being able to test) might come into play.

 

I have E1705, and it is a behemoth, but also has a very solid construction - ten times better than my previous lappy. A lot of it is aluminium too. I don't know why ppl bash dell. I think they had a few bad years but I never got to experience that. My old old dell that I had 5+ yrs ago, my new inspiron and my mom's work dell all appear to have a good construction. Especially my E1705.

 

i think people don't like them just 'cause they're the easy/cheap way out. not as intense as building your own asus. i've had my dell desktop for 4 years and havent had a single problem. i'm looking forward to getting my 1505 (as seen in my sig) this week! the battery thing is a little sketchy, but it's only with older latitudes and 3 out of however many thousands (if not millions) that they've sold isnt too bad. Not too mention mac just recalled a bunch of batteries, too (VERY likely for the same reason, but they don't want to wait for the bad publicity) also, physically, dells are pretty rock-solid, second only to lenovos

anyway, i'm sure a custom built asus is probably a bit better than my e1505, but for $850, i don't think my dell can be beat

 

I have no issues with my Dell ... I wouldn't call it the best built laptop ever, but it seems solid enough and I have no issues takiing it back and forth from work.

 

Dell is really stepping it up as far as build quality goes.... I can remember some of the old Dell's I used to have. They were built very bad. Even though the Inspiron line is quite well built, they are not as good as the latitude line, and other notebooks like thinkpads.

 

I remember that Dell notebook quality seemed to suffer from 2001 to 2004. The Inspiron line in particular was pretty creaky, starting with the 4100 and 8100 series. The complaints began when people complained that the 4100 was not nearly as well built as its predecessor, the 4000.

I know Dell started listening to the complaints around 2003. The Latitude D600 was a big step up from the C series, and the D620 that came out this year has restored my confidence in Dell build quality. My D620 is the first Dell notebook I've owned in years.

 

My dell E1505 feels very solid and of good quality....

 

same here... my e1705 is a beast and a well built one. no flaws or cheapness on it. very solid, close to my dads IBM

 

Mine feels great, much better than the HP i was on this weekend... i felt like it was gonna break, it was one of the newer 15.4in HPs

 

Gota give my thumbs as well!! i have the 9400 and a xps gen 5 desktop i lovem i have had 2 hp laptops and 2 toshibas and one sony and the dell kills them hands down.

They Bash them cause the big box stores all have crap laptops and they know it lol the last thing they wana hear is dude im getting a dell lol

 

Yeah, I ordered a e1505, and it looks like one of the best laptops from the solid specs it contains. As well as Dell as a whole. I own a XPS Gen. 4, and what a beauty, rips through games on high at 1680 x 1050 resolution, like buttah. They're all just jealous.

 

I think it depends on when you bought your laptop and which one you bought. The latitudes and XPS are very durable and the better lines that dell offers. Now, I don't know how the current line is, but the previous line of Inspirons (like the 9300/6000/630m) quality wasn't that great.

I think you see alot of the complaints coming from the users that have had their laptops for awhile. The Inspirons are a great price, but I don't think the quality and build is the best on the market.

just my 2 cents.

 

My E1505 is awesome too!
Solidly built, doesn't feel like coke bottle plastic.

i thought the back of the screen as aluminum at first since it didn't flex, but then I read that it's plastic. The built is really good even though it's plastic.

 

its more reputation and the fact that they have massive coupons that spread this idea more than anything else

 

I actually got to use an Inspiron 6000 today (predecessor to the 6400/E1505) and I was quite impressed actually. I had heard all kinds of problems people had with the quality, but it actually seemed pretty solid to me. No flex on the LCD, which was very nice. But Dells do have a bad rep for build quality. I have a Latitude C640 from 2002, and it's build is REALLY bad compared to what we have nowadays. In fact, I recently took apart a 9-year old CTX notebook that had better hinges that what that C640 had. The C640 actually has a broken hinge right now. And the CD-ROM went out, but that can't really be blamed on Dell, that shame belongs to LG. But compared to that old Latitude, Inspirons are VERY well built. After actually getting hold of an i6000, I actually don't have that much of a problem with the Inspirons anymore, though I still prefer my M90, if at the very least for the looks.

 

Came across this review by abaxter:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2776

Heck it seems to be equivalent to the M90 in construction, with steel hinges, magnesium alloy chassis etc.

Soo di we make a mistake paying $$$ more for the M90 when we could have gone with a similarly spec'd 1705 for much less ?

 

I just received my 1505 in the mail. I installed OFFICE (..great), uninstalled AOL (...whoopee), then came installing SIMS 2. There were 4 disks. I popped in the first. Nothing happened. I clicked on "start" "run"...etc. Finally it ran..but a problem. The disk drive sounded like it was going a billion times a second and was so loud my girlfriend and I couldn't carry a conversation on while we were 2 feet apart.

Should I send this back to Dell to fix? Is the CD a problem on dells? Oh, by the way...this thing get's extremely hot (6 cell battery) after about 45 mins.

 

Dell's build quality has definitely changed for the better. My girlfriend has an Inspiron 6400 and it is horribly built. There is about an inch of play in the LCD movement so if you're in a car the LCD constantly moves back and forth. If you pick the notebook up from a corner, you hear creaking/cracking sounds which don't inspire (pun) confidence. She has two 9-cell batteries and they both rattle in the battery bay. I know for a fact that her notebook's build degraded over time one could say that it was of decent build quality when she bought it, but now it feels like a toy.

My Inspiron E1405 is wonderfully built (save the cheap CD-RW/DVD drive that rattles). We'll see after a year's use if it still holds up to it's original build quality. I'm much more impressed with some other manufactures when it comes to build quality, but in general Dell is making significant improvements IMO.

 

it could be your disks... any scratches on them???
have you tried the other 3 discs???

i'm not sure though..

 

I've tried disk 2 and 3. All the disks have never been used.

Quick question..
I have a dinasour HP Desktop from 1999 with a 24x cd rom/cdr burner. My new 1505 has the 8x DVD/CDR drive. Does that neccessarily mean it reads/loads my games at a slower rate than my old PC? Or did I just buy a defected e1505?

 

No, the 8x is the max. read/write speed for DVDs, it still reads/writes CDs at 24x. I have an E1505 w/ that same drive also.

 

So I downloaded The Sims disk 1 & 2 and my dell e1505 froze. (BTW-The Sims 2 is 300 + MB total). I was going to uninstall it in the Add or Remove folder.

Low and behold..The Sims 2 is showing up as 1384 MB and it will not let me delete it. What the *(#$#!@! is going on? I'm frustrated with this e1505 and I've used it for 2 hours total now.

 

I was speaking to a Dell tech guy and he was trying to convince me that my drive goes so slow when reading CDs because it only has an 8x read rate. Only when I showed him on Dell's website that it has a 24x read rate for CDs did he agree with me.

Once we're on this topic, another Dell rep told me that my drive goes so slow when reading CDs because the X rates are data transfer rates, not read rates. He agreed with me that this makes zero sense because if so there would be no difference between CD and DVD rates.

 

...and that is why I'm so confused on why my 1.66 Mhz Dual Processor I just received last night is performing as slowly as it is. Especially when it comes to loading a simple game as The Sims 2.

 

It could be performing slowly because Dell has a TON of junkware on the Inspirons. If you haven't turned any of this off or reformatted, then your laptop will be running slow. The more processes you have running, the slower your laptop will be. Most optimize laptops run around 30-40 processes, while laptops set to factory condition usually run 60+ processes.

 

Yeah, even with my M90 with not much junkware on it, I was running 50-60 processes when I got it. Did a clean install and was at around 38, and now I'm at like 42 with a few apps installed.

 

I do not have the Windows Media disk from Dell. I just checked, and I have 80 processess running!!!!! HOLY MOLY!!

1. Where should I go from here?
2. Will Dell give me a disk for free?
3. Can I just ADD/REMOVE myself?
4. Is there a thread that guides me if I don't have the disk?

Thanks to all!!

 

1. get the disc or remove them manually (i say go for format)
2.) call dell's tech support. it might take a few phone calls but they will send them to you for free - next business day too, so you'll get them fairly quickly
3.)I vote for format since I created the guide to help everyone out . Honestly, go with what you feel comfortable with. Formatting is usually the best way to go since that ensures that your drive will be clean. Add/remove will still leave registry keys and folders. If you are concerned about MD or any areas of formatting, I can help you through that.
4.)there is a guide that tells you what software is what, but I don't remember where it is at. You can use your own judgement on the software that you don't need. You can also just do the optimize guide which is located in the Dummy forum and turn off all unnecessary services/programs.

 

Thank you Southern Girl, I will look at all options. I will be back here if I get stuck.

 

I actually went to MSCONFIG and unchecked the Startup processess. That cut my proccessors from 80 to 48 which sped up the loading time. But then the screen popped up each time I booted up on my desktop. It said I tweaked the Config. and this message will appear each time I log on.

I still am having trouble with my SIMS 2 game so I went to download it on limewire (in turn, I received a burned copy of SIM 1.) I'm done for now.

I begin my vacation on Saturday and was just thinking out loud if I should send it to Dell while I'm out of town.

 

I used to have a HP Pavilion zt3200 for 2 years, then my motherboard died (I'm trying to fix it.) I bought a dell e1505 on april with the U$S750 off deal. When I used it for the first time, it felt cheap and flimsy in comparison with my old loved HP zt3200. BUT! I get a $2200 notebook for $1500...

 

I've been reading the Dell 1705's, 1710's lower housing, and the LCD lid is made out of magnesium alloy


BTW: DELL if your "listening"....

How about:

A: a FULL size keyboard with numeric keypad

B: Adding HDCP to the DVI, to make it HDMI so you can hook it up to a big screen tv, Plasma, LCD, Projector...

DVI+HDCP= HDMI... all new big screens,etc requiring it for a direct digital connnection.

What is HDCP? Why is it important to me?



http://www.digitalconnection.com/FAQ/HDTV_12.asp