Dell Inspiron 1000 Review (pics, specs)

by Andrew Baxter

The Dell Inspiron 1000 gives no excuses for what it really is; a budget notebook. With a starting price of $799 before any of the various Dell promotions or coupons have been applied, we're already talking about a rock-bottom priced notebook. So buyers of the Inspiron 1000 know they're not going to get the most dazzling design or latest performance in the world of laptops, far from it, butfor $799 it's quite surprising what you can get.

Overview

Dell Inspiron 1000

The Inspiron 1000 is available in 3-flavors from Dell: "Entry-Level", "Mid-Range" and "Higher-End". All Inspiron 1000 notebooks feature a 2.20GHz Mobile Intel Celeron processor, 24X CD-RW/DVD combo drive and Windows XP Home for the OS. The Entry-Level configuration features a 14.1-inch XGA screen, 256MB of RAM, and 30GB hard drive. The Mid-Range configuration has a 15-inch XGA screen, 256MB of RAM and 40GB hard drive. The Higher-End configuration has a 15-inch XGA screen, 40GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM and a longer lasting 8-cell 65Whr Lithium-Ion battery (the two lower configurations feature a rather weak 8-cell 43WHr Nickel metal Hydride battery, much older and cheaper technology than the Lithium-Ion type of battery)

In this review I will be covering the mid-range offering of the Inspiron 1000 (2.20GHz Mobile Intel Celeron, 40GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM, 24X CD-RW/DVD, 15-inch XGA screen, 8-cell 43WHr NiMH battery).

Design

Dell Inspiron 1000 view from above (view larger image)

The Inspiron 1000 deviates from many other notebooks in the Inspiron line in that it is completely black in color. No marquee grey and blue Dell coloring. In fact, the look is a throw back to what we used to see with Inspiron notebooks and reminds me a lot of my old Inspiron 8200. The other thing that should be noted about the casing is that it's not exactly a pretty or highly durable type of plastic. Often, notebooks that are constructed with a plastic casing (and most are) will present a shine or try and give an effect of being metallic. The Inspiron 1000 tries no such feats and makes no excuses for itself, it looks like plastic, feels like plastic and very much so is all plastic on the exterior with the exception of the screen. But for $799 we don't expect a sleek looking Apple PowerBook.

Dimension wise the review model I have is the Mid-Range 15-inch screen type so it has a height of 1.46-inches, width of 13.0-inches and depth of 10.6-inches. The weight without the AC adapter or any accessories is 6.63lbs. So although the Inspiron 1000 isn't a thin and light notebook, it's not a beast in size either and is fairly easy to carry around and be mobile with. The challenge in mobility comes more with the battery life; I'll get to that later.

Input & Output Ports

The Inspiron 1000 only provides for the absolutely essential ports you'll need on a notebook. Pleasantly surprising is the fact there are 3 USB 2.0 ports available, often times in a budget or even mid-range notebook you'll only get 2. However, don't even think about asking for extra ports such as media card readers, FireWire or S-Video out port. That's just not available for such a budget priced notebook.

left-side profile view of Inspiron 1000 (view larger image)

On the left-side of the Inspiron 1000 we have just the bare necessities of what a notebook needs. A headphone and microphone jack and one PCI card slot. If you want wireless in this notebook you'll have to use that PCI slot to put your wireless card in, there is no option of internal wireless. And once you've used that one slot up, it's game over, since there is only one slot available.

back-side profile view of Inspiron 1000 (view larger image)

On the back-side of the Inspiron 1000 is where most of the action is for ports. Our 3 USB 2.0 ports are all lined up next to one another on the back-right side. Next to those we have the modem and Ethernet input ports. In the middle is the fan and on the back-left side are the video connector for connection to external monitors and the AC adapter plug-in port for charging your battery or working on AC power.

right-side view of Inspiron 1000 as seen from above (view larger image)

On the right-side we have the 24X DVD/CD-RW drive. That's it you ask? Yes, that's it.

front-side view of Inspiron 1000 (view larger image)

Looking from the front we can see the keyboard and touch pad with two mouse buttons, two device status lights and speakers that sit at the very front of the notebook. The power button sits at the back of the keyboard. There are no volume control buttons or other types of shortcut buttons to speak of. As I said before, just the bare essentials here.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Inspiron 1000 does have a full-sized keyboard, and although it doesn't have as nice a feel as the IBM ThinkPad T40 notebook I use, it's actually not a bad keyboard overall. There's enough travel to the keys and "clickiness" so you know you've hit a key without having to look at the screen or keyboard to check if that's the case. I don't like the location of the Insert/Delete/PgUp/PgDn/Home/End buttons, they are all on the right to bottom right-hand-side of the keyboard. I prefer them to be on the top right-hand side as is usually the case with a desktop computer keyboard.

keyboard view of Inspiron 1000 (view larger image)

The touchpad navigation is decent. I'm just not a big fan of touchpads in general and always prefer to have a pointing stick. Using the touchpad you can assign short cuts to open programs by double tapping in the corner. Double tapping the touchpad performs the same action as a double-click of the mouse. The touchpad buttons are pretty cheap feeling and the travel is not very smooth for pushing them down. But they work and I've actually seen worse in more expensive notebooks. In particular I've always had issues with the touchpad that the Sony VAIO line of notebooks has, sadly enough I found this $799 notebook to have a better touchpad than some of the $2500 VAIOs I've used.

The one thing missing from the keyboard area is any hardware shortcut buttons; it's always nice to have a volume control or mute button at the top. Guess that was put on the cost-cutting block!

Processor and Performance

Well, first of all let's get things straight, if you're buying the Inspiron 1000you're not going to be the type of buyer looking for the best performance in a notebook possible. You just hope that it runs all of your Office applications well and you can surf the web. With the Intel Mobile Celeron 2.2GHz chip you'll accomplish this, but not much else. Gaming is out of the question for all but the most basic games, especially with 256MB of RAM and an integrated graphics card from Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. that uses 32MB of shared memory. Windows XP will be wanting to use most of the memory that's available if you have 256MB, so don't go opening too many applications at once or you'll be hitting the hard drive frequently and the Inspiron 1000 will sputter along. Getting 512MB of RAM will help with performance, and leaving the laptop plugged in rather than unplugged will also help. Remember, this is a Mobile Celeron chip so once you switch to battery power it scales back on performance to save power.

I found performance difference to be quite vast between being plugged-in and not plugged-in. I used a simple benchmark program named "Super-Pi" to test the processor performance of the Inspiron 1000, this program allows you to calculate the number Pi to a selectable number of digits of precision. Calculating Pi to 2 million digits of precision took 2 mins 59 secs when on AC power, upon switching to battery power the same operation took 9 mins and 3 secs. That's 300% slower. So the moral of the story is, stay plugged in with this notebook when you can.

Just to add though, although processor and overall notebook performance are not a strong point of this machine, most people will be thrilled just to know that the notebook is more than capable of playing a DVD, playing music, and burning CDs. If that's the extent of the multimedia work and enjoyment you wish for, then the Inspiron 1000 will fit the bill.

Battery

Using my typical battery drain test of charging the notebook all the way up to 100% and then playing a CD with the screen on full-brightness caused the Inspiron 1000 to warn me at exactly 2 hours and 2 minutes that it's battery was low and only 10% remained. Then, 6 minutes later at 2 hours and 8 minutes of battery usage the Inspiron forced itself into hibernation mode due to a critically low battery. This 2 hour and 8 minute battery life time was actually slightly better than I expected. The Entry Level and Mid-Range Inspiron 1000 comes equipped with an 8-cell 43WHr Nickel metal Hydride battery that I was expecting to get a 1.5 hour battery life with. Not that 2 hours of battery life is all that great, but there are certainly notebooks out there that do worse, specifically any desktop replacement style notebook. The Dell Inspiron 9100 has comparable battery life to the Inspiron 1000, but the 9100 is more expensive and much more powerful of course. If you upgrade to the 8-cell Lithium Ion battery, which is actually standard with the higher-end configuration of the Inspiron 1000, you'll likely get 2.5 -- 3 hours of battery life.

Heat

The idea of having a notebook computer is that you could put it in your lap and work if you want, thus how the alternative but not quite so PC name of laptop computer arose. With some notebooks you find things get rather warm and uncomfortable on your thighs if the machine doesn't cool itself well or tends to generate too much heat. Unfortunately, I found that the back left area of the Inspiron 1000 did indeed make things uncomfortable for me after about 20 minutes of time. So, my recommendation is if you're going to be doing a lot of work with a notebook in your lap, you might want to look elsewhere or make sure you're wearing long pants!

Sound

The Inspiron 1000 has two speakers that are well placed at the front of the notebook so that they project forward. All the same, the sound quality from these stereo speakers is bad so there's not much to project. If you're watching a DVD or listening to music the sound-quality deteriorates as you try to crank up the volume to overcome problems of lack of speaker clarity. For better sound quality use headphones or external speakers to overcome these problems.

Screen

With a 15" XGA (1024 x 768 pixels) screen you're not going to have any problem seeing icons or text. The screen is decently bright so viewing a DVD or even a webpage from a few feet away is certainly doable. Some might think that with the low price of this notebook you'd expect a dim screen, uneven backlighting or some other type of sacrifice. Not the case, although the screen isn't on par with say a Sony VAIO XBrite technology equipped notebook and it doesn't have widescreen viewing, it's fine for what it is. Personally I prefer having SXGA resolution so that I can fit two windows on one screen, that's not an option with the Inspiron 1000. Overall, thumbs up on the screen though; well-lit and easy to read with no dead pixels to speak of on the Inspiron 1000 I have.

Optical Drive

As mentioned before, the Inspiron 1000 comes standard with a 24x DVD/CD-RW optical drive. This drive is not modular, meaning you cannot upgrade to a DVD burner or even leave it out of the notebook for that matter. The drive is a little flimsy when open, it wobbles around quite a bit and I'd be fearful if it were rough handled it could break, but as far as performance for playing back DVDs/CDs and burning CDs it's just fine.

Software

The software included with the Inspiron 1000 is as basic as it gets. WordPerfect productivity pack and McAfee Security center 90-day trial and Dell Picture Studio (Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7) are the only real extras you get outside of the Windows XP Home OS. The good news is that Dell provides you with a recovery disk and device drivers on CDs for those times that you totally hose your system and have to start from scratch again. It amazes me how many manufacturers still don't do this or that make you pay for them if you decide you want them. Kudos to Dell for providing these CDs, even when the notebook is a cheap one.

Conclusion

The Dell Inspiron 1000 is absolutely a no frills notebook. It's budget priced and has very limited and rigid configuration options. No internal wireless is kind of a blow, but you can get a 3rd party external wireless card that slots into the PCI slot. You can expand on this notebook with accessories by using the 3 USB 2.0 ports as well.

The combined processor, hard drive and memory performance of the notebook is rather slow if you're running any type of demanding application or trying to multi-task by playing music, browsing the web and typing a Word document. But for doing one thing at a time and using the notebook for basic computer tasks, you don't need the latest 64-bit chip and you'll be just fine with the Celeron 2.20GHz chip the Inspiron 1000 is equipped with. I don't recommend this to students that want a notebook for 4-years, it'll be outdated and won't last the abuse you'll give it on campus. I don't recommend this to professionals that need to be mobile and get work done, it's simply not a good solution. But, if you're on a budget, which absolutely many of us are, but still crave the convenience and mobility of a notebook computer that can be used around the home or do a bit of travelling, the Inspiron 1000 may have just lowered the price bar to provide a name brand computer with service and support (1-year) for those that don't make oodles of money. Or, if you just need an extra notebook to put in the kids room or basement den, then maybe this is for you too.

Pros

• Price! At $799 and under, you can't beat getting a name-brand notebook with 1-year service and support.
• 15-inch XGA screen is actually mildly impressive with its brightness and clarity.
• 3 USB 2.0 ports for a budget notebook is good.
• Windows XP Home recovery disk included for when you need to reinstall the OS and start over again!

Cons

• Slow Celeron 2.20GHz processor, really slow when on battery power
• Cheap plastic case will not take much of a beating, drop it and it will likely crack or break.
• No exciting features whatsoever except for maybe a CD-burner, just the bare minimum features necessary in a computer

Pricing and Availability

 

i have one simple question, does this dell 1000 have a floppy drive??

 

From the pictures, I would say no floppy drive, but you could always buy an external one if you really need it. Why not just buy a thumbdrive device?

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Fujitsu S6210: 1.6Ghz PM ~ 768MB RAM ~ 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
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Nice review.

Inspiron 9100- 3.2ghz P4 HT - 1gb RAM - 100GB HD - 4x dvd/cd burner -128mb ATI 9700. RoX0r mY coX0r!

 

Actually for 799, there's a lot of other options you can go with that offer better specs than the Inspiron 1000. Some for example would be averatec and emachine, as well as several HP/Compaq and Toshiba models that used the celeron M processor. Plus I think give it next week or so you see plenty of celeron M processor laptop going for around 500 or so after rebate. I think unless the price go down to 500 or so, getting an Inspiron 1000 is not really worth it. That's just my two cent.

thietlong

 

Yeah, and a quick glance in the sunday paper usually yields much better deals. Similar compaq/hp models can be gotten at around $600, after rebates of course.

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Green Emails - Get paid to read emails.

 

An excellent and informative review but I think one thing needs to be corrected - abaxter refers to the "PCI slot" a few times - I think he means to say "PC Card slot"

I wasn't sure if this laptop actually had a *mini-PCI* slot inside that I could stick a wireless mini-PCI card into...

 

I purchased an Inspiron 1000 just before Xmas for my wife. She needed a laptop while working on her PhD. She uses mainly MS-Office, Internet access, and some research data tools. I think this was a great buy for her. I bought it at Dell through their EPP program and paid about $560 with 2nd day and 1-yr warranty. I even got a free wireless PC card and a printer(which will be sold at our next garage sale). I am a computer professional and for me, I would not want to use it. I prefer the IBM T40 I am currently using for the size and feel. At past employers, I have used Dell products, which are fairly good. I think for most users, though, this is it. In my experience, most business and education users are not in need of half the power they think they need. The best plus is that I get my PC back to reload Linux.[ ]

 

Can anyone please help me with the following:
I have an Inspiron 1000 with 256 MB of RAM. As mentioned in the posts above the laptop runs very slow due to that. Now one of my friends has an extra 512 MB DDR RAM chip. I tried it and I just could not believe myself. It was lightning fast. I have decided to go for an upgrade. Now the only thing that is stopping me is the fact that I have read at many websites that this model can have a maximum memory of 512 MB.
I don't understand that. If the maximum that it can take is 512 how was it running on (256 +512) = 768 MB.
I even confirmed that with msinfo32 and it said I had 768 MB of RAM.
If I put on this 512 MB of memory could it cause any problems with the laptop.

Please help.

 

You might have misunderstood the max memory size. The max you can add in a slot is 512MB stick. You can add 2*512MB modules and get the memory upto 1GB, but you cannot add 1*1GB module in the slot.

 

Thanks very much indeed. You have been of great help!!!!

 

Hello !


please somebody confirm that Inspiron 1000 can handle 768MB and not just 512 as it reads everywhere.

thanks!

Manuel

 

as the note above says, it is maximum 512 per memory slot. You can have 256+512 or 512+512 or even 256+256 if you like. My wife has this laptop and it's been running about as well as a boat anchor, but I picked up 512 from Ebay (shipped in 3 days to Canada even!) and put it in. Running with 768mb at the moment and runs almost as fast as my Athlon 64 3400. Well worth the 30 or so dollars extra if you're going to get this laptop!!

 

Just this week I upgraded my Inspiron 1000 with a "Kingston ValueRAM 1GB 200-Pin DDR SO-DIMM DDR 333 (PC 2700) Notebook Memory". Before jumping past the recommended 512 max, I did a little research and found several places stating that it could handle more memory as long as you matched the correct memory. So... now my computer is a thousand times faster than it was before with the 256 that it came with, and now I'm showing 1+g in memory.
Startup and shut down a much faster, and working with multiple word docs at the same times doesn't cause lag or lock up like before.
Just my two cents.

 

I need help!!
I hope someone can help me. I have a Dell Inspiron 1000. Everytime I boot it up after 10 or so minutes, it starts to restart. I have checked the start-up menu, processes, everything I can think of with in the time allowed before the notebook boots. Can some one please help me? [email link edited by moderator]

 

Hi,
If you could post that question in a separate thread in the Hardware forum, that would be helpful. This is a very old thread and I'm afraid you won't get any responses.

You can create a new thread by clicking the button in the top left of the screen, "Create New Thread."

 

What kind of 512mb did you use? the PC2700 333mhz or the PC2100 266mhz?

 

This laptop is completely obsolete, the review was done in 2004...

 

Anyone know the brand of the optical drive in this model. My girlfriend has one and the drive only works when it wants to now. So I wanted to uninstall and reinstall the drivers, but I don't have the laptop with me. So does anyone know the maker of the drive so I can do this?

 

Any slim IDE drive will work in the laptop, there is no specific model. You can find a variety of them on Newegg.com and other computer parts stores.

 

This is wrong. Maximum memory means that the maximum total is 512 mb. Which means 2x256. If you use more your computer can crash, or it will only recognize the limit or a fraction of the limit. What was said before is wrong. I wonder how the memory worked out for you?

 

The laptop CAN be upgraded to 1280 MB by adding a 1GB 200 pin DDR SO-DIMM. The chipset supports two 1 GB memories but one is not replaceable. That allows for a maximum of 256 MB plus 1024 MB for a total of 1280 MB. I've also upgraded the 30 GB 4200 RPM drive to a 100 GB 7200 RPM drive. Before these two upgrades, the computer was so slow, even with an added 256 MB for a total of 512 MB of ram. Now it's fast, fast, fast. I installed XP Pro and ran it for two weeks without a single problem. I then installed Vista Ultimate and it's been working perfect. Here is the Windows Experience Index:
Processor - 3.2
Memory - 2.9
Graphics - 1.9
Gaming graphics - 1.0
Hard drive - 5.0
I was going to just reload my XP image, but the computer is fast enough for Vista so I'm going to dual boot. I also added a li-ion battery. For about $200, I now have a fast, usable notebook.

 

Hey, does anyone know what the fastest processor is that this can handle? I have one of these as a backup machine and would like to upgrade from the celeron that it has. Thanks.

 

I would want to add more RAM to my Inspiron 1000. There is only one slot, could you please tell if I can add 256 MB or if adding 512 is also possible (is such RAM available for a single slot or 256 is the max). I tried Transcend 256 MB RAM at a shop today, it didn't work.

 

I wanted to post my experiences here for others who have an Inspiron 1000 and are looking for more performance. First, I upgraded the 30GB HDD to a Seagate 120GB HDD. This upgrade was quite easy (using an EZ Upgrade kit) and gave my system a definite performance boost. Then I tackled the RAM issue. Like most other users, I had the 512MB in a 256x2 configuration. After reading several posts online I decided to try a Kingston PC2700 333MHZ 1GB SoDimm. At first, the system recognized the ram, and system information showed over 1GB of available ram. However, the system would lock up or crash, sometimes during the boot process, other times after hours of use. It was just too unreliable for me. I did some more research online, and someone in another forum said that the Inspirion 1000 actually has a PC2100 266MHZ 256MB chip built in, so any memory upgrade should be no faster than this. Also, he said that the system might not "like" too much RAM. Based on this information I bought a Corsair PC2100 266MHZ 512MB chip, and installed this. I can report that my system has been running perfectly for the last 3 weeks with this configuration. 768MB seems to be enough for my needs, as I have seen a strong performance boost. I hope this information is helpful for anyone looking to do an upgrade!