Dell Inspiron 6000D (2.0GHz, 1GB) Review (pics, specs)

by Felipe Dana, Brazil

Dell Inspiron 6000D Review

Dell Inspiron 6000D (click image for larger size)

Dell Inspiron 6000D (click image for larger size)

Introduction

I live in Brazil but purchased my Inspiron 6000D system from the United States. At first I was looking at theHP dv1000 or dv4000 as potential notebooks to buy. However, these HP notebooks did notoffer the high-resolution screen Ineeded.Dell offers a higherresolution screenon many of itsnotebooks, so I decided to look there. The Dell Inspiron 6000 15.4" laptop was a perfect size for my needs and offeredvariousresolutions all the way up to 1900 x 1200 (WUXGA), so I decided to go with this as my choice of notebooks.

The 6000D is a middle range laptop and is described by Dell as an "Affordable Widescreen Entertainment" laptop. But, although described as "affordable" itcan get expensive depending on how you configure it-such asin my case. If you're lookingfor ahigh spec powerful notebook the normal route is to look at the Inspiron 9300, butthe 9300was out of question for me because I wanted something more portable to use on location (for the printing and photo processing work I use acomputer for). In addition,I don't play gamesso the ATI X300 128MB dedicated graphics cardin the i6000D was more than enough for my needs.

After applying a $700off coupon code, I got my system from Dell.com for around $1,500. Iorderedtwo batteries andconfigured the 6000 with 1GB ofRAM and a 60GB 7,200RPM harddrive. Dell charges a lot forthis battery additionand upgrade options,but I had very limited places to buy from, if you're in the US you're better off getting RAM and a 7k100HDD at NewEgg and the battery on eBay.

Dell Inspiron 6000D specs as reviewed:

• Intel Pentium M Processor 760 (2.0GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
• 15.4 inch UltraSharp WSXGA+ (1680x1050)
• 1GB, DDR2, 533MHz
• 128MB DDR ATI's MOBILITY RADEON X300 PCI Express x16 Graphics
• 60GB 7200rpm Hard Drive (Hitachi 7k60 HTS726060M9AT00)
• 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer (SONY)
• Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 (802.11b/g) Internal Wireless
• Dell 350 Bluetooth Internal Wireless Card
• 80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Battery
• 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Battery
• Windows XP Professional

Ports:

• 1 IEEE 1394 (firewire)
• 4-USB 2.0
• 1 SD/MMC card reader
• 1 VGA monitor port
• 1 S-Video
• 1 Microphone and 1 headphone/speaker
• 1 PC card Slot
• 1 Ethernet port (10/100)
• 1 Phone Jack (dial-up)

Build and Design:

(click image for larger view)

(click image for larger view)

(click image for larger view)

The inital look and first impressions people have of the Dell 6000 are very good. The Inspiron 6000 has a silver plastic case and a white trim around the edges.

The notebook body is of solid build, the screen flexes very little, not enough for any ripples on the LCD even if you push it from the back of the lid.

I washoping to be ableto say that the silver finish looks and isfairly scratch resistant, but after a few weeks with the laptop, a few scratches are visible upon close inspection even though I'm very careful with the laptop.

Screen:

The screen is beautiful. I got the WSXGA+ version which has a native resolution of 1680x1050. Things look very small on a 15.4" LCD with this resolution,but thisis really great for me, as I use it for photo editing 90% of the time. Actually this display hasspoiled me so much that I bought a Dell 2005FPW to upgrade from my old LCD, that I currently use on the VGA (monitor-out)portfor the 6000d as a second display.

After calibration, the screen showed very good color/contrast accuracy for a laptop screen. There are no light leakage, sparkles or dead pixel issues either.

Speakers:

The Inspiron 6000D comes with two stereo speakers. I wasn't expecting much from the speakers, but was quite surprised at their performance which wasmuch better than I expected.

I still recommend external speakers if you listen to music or play games often.

Processor and Performance:

Thisis where this system really shines. The Pentium M 760 processor with a 7200RPM HDD and 1GB of DDR2 533MHzRAMprovides for areally snappy system and all the programs I use load really fast.

I must mention that I tweak all my systems to get the most out of them, Ionly leave a few programs at the startup and disable all theXP visual garbage.

The system takesaround 25-30 seconds to boot into XP Pro (timed from the second I push the power On button to the second I can open the Windows Start bar with the mouse with auto user login).

It takes around 5 to 7 seconds to open Photoshop CS2 for the first time (with others applications running), butit can take less than 2 seconds if I have opened it before.

Basic programs like Microsoft Word, Excel, Firefox, IE, etc. load REALLY fast -- I mean so fast I couldn't even time it, because they all load right after you click on the shortcut, in less than one second.

As I said before, I'm not a gamer, but I did install the demo version of BF2 to see how the graphic card performance is and I was able to run at 1280x1024 (external monitor native resolution) all mid-low settings very well with no OC.

The only thing I'm thinking about upgrading is the 1GB of RAM to 2GBof RAM (the max this system allows), I actually regret getting just 1 gig from dell, I useAdobe Photoshopa lotfor opening verylarge RAW filesand that eats system RAM really fast.

Benchmarks:

Dell Inspiron i6000d (2.0 GHz Pentium M)benchmark results:

SuperPi (calculated to 2million digits of accuracy): 1m 34s

Notebook	Time to Calculate Pi to 2 Million Digits
Dell Inspiron 6000(2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 34s
Gateway 7426GX (AMD Athlon 3700+)	1m 39s
IBM ThinkPad T43(1.86GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s
Fujitsu LifeBook N3510 (1.73 GHz Pentium M)	1m 48s
IBM ThinkPad T41 (1.6GHz Pentium M)	2m 23s
Compaq R3000T (Celeron 2.8GHz)	3m 3s
Dell Inspiron 600m(1.6 GHz Pentium M)	2m 10s
Dell Inspiron 8600 (1.7GHz Pentium M)	2m 28s

Below are the HD Tune benchmark results (Hitachi 60GB, 7200RPM hard drive)

Below is the PcMark 04 benchmark result(run only once)

Keyboard and Touchpad:

(click imagefor larger view)

I love the Inspiron 6000 keyboard.The keys are easy to press and don't require much force to register a key-strike.Before I got the notebook, I read some reviews with complaints about the "delete" button being on the top (near the backspace key), but I actually like it a lot. In a few hours I was used to the keyboard already.There's no flex in the keyboard -- or at least not enoughthat I can tell.

The touchpad is nice, it has both horizontal and vertical scrolls and is OK to use. I have used it only a few times because I have a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse (by the way,the Bluetooth is agreat feature) and a Wacom tablet for photo editing, so the touchpad is only used on the occasions I'm on the road and don't have a mouse handy.

Input and Output Ports:

On the rear of the Inspiron 6000 is an Ethernet port, phone line port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, S-video and VGA outputand the AC adapter plug (click image for larger view)

The right side has an SD card reader, Mic-in, headphone-out, 1 FireWire (4pin) port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, and 1 PCMCIA type II slot (click image for larger view)

On the left sideis only the DVRW drive and the notebook's lock slot.

Wireless:

I got the Dell 6000 with the Intel PRO Wireless 2200 (802.11b/g) internal wireless card and Dell 350 Bluetooth Internal wireless card.

First, let me say the Bluetooth works great, as I said above, I have been using a MicrosoftBluetooth mouse and the range is impressive, and not havingto deal with asingle cable is great.

On the other hand, I do not recommend getting the Intel 2200bg card, pay a few extra bucks for the 2915abg card and you won't have any headaches.

I use a Netgear Wireless 802.11grouter in my house and there was nothing I could do to make them work together. It connects to the network, but doesn't receive or send any data packages. I also have an old Netgear802.11b router witch worked great, so I testedthe laptop withother routers and found out that it works with somebut not with others (even if they are the same model and brand). Updating the drivers on the card and/or firmware on the modem DID NOT fix the problemfor me at the time. I had the opportunity to exchange my routerfor another one (same model, Netgear 802.11g) and mysteriouslyit's working now.

If you goto the NotebookReview.com forums, you will find that there are many people using this card and having problems (not only with Dell systems), and the last driver fromIntel seems to have it fixed for most. I updated the driver this week but haven't had the chance to try it with some routers that did not with work before.

One other note too, it may soundlike it's the router problem, but it's not. The routers that had problems with this card were all working fine before with other laptops before, and I even tested them at the same time with another 2200bg card on a Toshiba laptop and it worked flawlessly.

Battery:

I got the 6-cell and 9-cell batteries. They are the same size, but the 9-cell version is heavier.
The battery lifeon the i6000D is impressive. Even with a 7200RPM HDD, the 9-cell battery gives me around 5 hours with the screen at brightnesslevel 5 (on a scale of 1 to 8) with Wi-Fi and using the notebook for browsing the web etc.

One very cool feature I should mention about this battery is that it hasa button you can push to light up an indicator that shows how much charge remains, this workseven if the battery is not connected to the notebook.

OS / Bloatware:

Bloatware (unwanted software) on the Dell 6000is REALLY bad! When you fisrt boot up there areabout 13 iconsin your systemtray and many, many applications running in the background, this is all really degrading to the overall system performance. There is so much to get rid off that I strongly recommend reformatting the system with a fresh XP disk. All of my review observations and stats arebased on a fresh Windows installation, I reformatted the system after about 10-minutes of using the Dell initial setup!

One other thing to mention, the Dell restore partition takes up about 5GB of space onyour hard drive, so if you're not planning on using this restore partition (like me), when formatting the drive, don't forget to delete the partition.

Conclusion:

I really like the Dell Inspiron 6000D, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a 15.4" notebook.

Pros:

• Well priced
• Great performance (cpu, hdd)
• Nice Screen
• Looks great
• Great battery life

Cons:

• Excessive bloatware
• No Software/OS CDs included

Pricing and Availability: Dell Inspiron 6000D

Other Dell Inspiron 6000 Reviews from NBR:

• Dell Inspiron 6000 Review by Dragon_Myr(pics, specs)
• Dell Inspiron 6000 Review by hanumantd (pics, specs)[/font][/URL]

 

Felipe, those pictures are amazing! I think you could help Dell sell notebooks just by offering to take pictures for them, specs and performance aside, anyone that looks at these photos will probably run out and buy the i6000 -- you've made it look gorgeous!

Great review, thanks for your take here on Dell's mainstream notebook, it's right in the sweet spot for what most people are looking for and Dell's prices are definitely some of the best.

 

OK, can I hear a nomination for best photographs of the year? They are downright beautiful!

Very well written, kudos for that. And, nice job of keeping your machine tuned up - I am meticulous about that as well. The visual stuff in XP really does slow things down..I have all that disabled. Definitely makes a difference, even in SuperPI.

Well done!

 

I have to ask, what camera did you use?

 

seriously, great photos and great review

 

I am humbled by your elegant photography. Well written too.

 

Thank you for the kind word guys!
Taking the pictures was much easier than writing the review! Hehe

nathanhuth, I use a Canon 20D (for these photos I used a 24-70L and 70-200L)..

 

Haha, i think the quality of the review is definitely enhanced because of the photos. The bokeh that those L-series lenses make is superb!

 

I wish you're too kind chazman.


UFG, yes, the "L"s are beautiful

 

Awesome. My dad and I picked up a 20d this fall, and soon will have then 24-105L hopefully. The L does make all the difference.. well that and sunshine outside and not snow

 

Felipe,
Tu es o Maximo caralho!

 

Hello,

I am new to formatting laptops and have never formatted a computer after Windows 98...

How does one format and re-install the software on the inspiron 6000D if neither the OS nor the software is provided on a CD?

Also, is microsoft office included in the package?

Thank you!

 

Go to the Dell forum and check the FAQ's there, they will show you how to do it.

 

Great review, those photos really ARE amazing

 

definitely one of the best reviews i've read on this site. your photos look fantastic and your review was clear and consice. excellent job!

 

Yep, great review. Pictures are awesome, too bad there aren't more of them (always want more of the good stuff, lol).

I like the fact that the 6-cell and 9-cell batteries are of the same size (even if one is heavier). The fact that the 9-cell Thinkpad batteries stick out from the back is a real cosmetic annoyance.

 

Hye, great review. Unfortunately I can't find this one in Israel

ND

 

thanks everyone..


BTW, just ran 3dmark05, around 1300 stock and 1630 slightly overclocked (gpu).

 

Hi,
How mobile is this notebook?
Do you guys carry it on the run?.
I wonder because I'm seriously considering de dell6000 but I'm worried about the size and the weight.
best regards,
Carla

 

Btw, I'm talking about the model with 512mb, 6cell and 60GB.

 

Great review and other people agree that your pictures are great..... http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DELL-Inspiron...6838938635QQcategoryZ3713QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem