Dell Inspiron 1501 Review

I have an Inspiron 1501 notebook with ATI RADEON x1150 IGP. I have benchmarked it with 3DMARK 05. The score is 704.

 

The charts seem to be based upon 3DMark06 not 05.An X1400/7400 would score about ~1800.Yeah, I compared the rest against the 3DMark table.
They are 3DMark06 scores.

 

i disagree with most reviews of this labtop i have one with a amd turion 64 mk36 (single) core and its as fast or faster than most of the core 2 duos it has 1gb of ram and windows xp media center (i refuse to update to windows vista even though i have a free express upgrade to it. and i personally favor the design over most other systems the procceser even switches speeds when it doesnt have to run at full speed anywhere from 1 ghz to full speed 1.99 ghz.

 

they get alot better when you update to an AMD Turion 64 mobile technology with 1 GB of RAM. sorry about the double post

 

Hi, I have a question about this laptop. I've read this entire thread and have guaged that most of you are not happy with it. But here's my story haha: So I'm a university student starting in september and obviously I need a cheaper laptop than my actual dream one (Fujitsu LifeBook A6030). This 1501 is being offered for $499 right now, so I figured I could upgrade the hell out of it and still not break 1000 plus tax, which I can do. So here are the specs:

PROCESSOR: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TK-53
OPERATING SYSTEM: Genuine Windows® XP Home
LCD DISPLAY: 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife™
MEMORY: 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHZ, 2 DIMM
HARD DRIVE: 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
GRAPHICS CARD: ATI RADEON® Xpress1150 with 256MB HyperMemory™
OPTICAL DRIVE: 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability+O216

I was also able to get a 9-cell battery. I will only be using it for typing up stuff like papers and taking notes in Word, playing some music, and web surfing. The total cost comes to $709 and with tax $808.26. My brother told me that the only thing he thinks isn't so great about it is the processor, but with a 9-cell battery I should be okay and that for the price it's an awesome deal. Since I can't talk to him directly before school starts (he is out of the country on a vacation) I just wanted some other opinions before I bought it.

Thanks in advance!

 

I almost got this laptop, but in the end my Compaq was cheaper and just seemed like a better deal than the Dell. AMD processors do not run that great in laptops. I had an Athlon XP-M in my old HP Pavilion ze4427wm and the fan was constantly running and the battery life was at best 3 hours with nothing but typing and the screen on the lowest setting. My Celeron M can get about 3 hours with iTunes running and having the wireless on. If you really want to get a laptop under $1000, you can get much better laptops than the 1501. If you can, check out your local Best Buy or Circuit City to see what they have. I'm sure it will be much better than this Inspiron.

 

latest catalog from Dell showed up here with the 1501 at $499 containing:

1GB memory
AMD Sempron 3600+ CPU
1390 wireless mini-card adapter (worthless IMHO)
Vista Home basic

seems like things could be cranked to go faster with a Sempron 4000+ CPU and some overclocking skillz thrown in. Then, this baby may be worth a go.

tj