Dell Inspiron 6400

Well, people have already posted tons of pictures for the 6400/E1505 so I won't bother with that. I actually used a number of reviews from this wonderful site to determine my laptop purchase. My new 6400 arrived 6 days ago.

So far, I am very impressed and got more than I had hoped for.

My system is as follows...

Core 2 Duo T5200 @ 1.60 GHz
2 GB RAM
160 GIG SATA Hard Drive
True Life screen coating at 15.4"
ATI X1400
9 Cell Battery
Windows Vista Home Premium
Deluxe Nylon Carrying Case (Brief-case style)
Wireless Next Gen


The laptop was built in record time and arrive 6 days earlier than the expected delivery date. No problems at all with Dell, they were great, and my laptop seems very solid and well-made.
First off..

The screen is beautiful. For years now I have been using a standard 17" monitor with my tower PC. Even though this screen is 15.4", working with it seems better, bigger. The widescreen aspect makes it a dream to work with. The TrueLife coating is wonderful in that it makes the screen more readable from an angle and the colors are beautifully vibrant, making everything I do look wonderful. It is quite literally the most pretty-looking screen I've ever seen. The only problem is that it seems to reflex florescent lights terribly, making the screen rather hard to see.

Windows Vista takes some getting used to, and if you have a computer with Windows XP, don't bother to upgrade in my opinion, but if you are getting a new computer it is interesting. Once I got used to the new start menu, and control panel, I'm actually starting to like the new features in vista, few as they are. One reason I chose to stay with Vista is that it is supposed to be good at handling battery life and wireless connectivity. Vista is very, very pretty, but that's not saying much, especially with things like Linux, not to mention Window Blinds, which can make XP look exactly like Vista, and many other beautiful themes.

The keyboard is great, just what I was hoping for and then some. It has that nice *click.. click.. click* feel when you type, that I love in laptops. I enjoy the amount of armrest the board has available when typing, it makes it more comfortable if you type for long periods of time. The keyboard is full size, even amazingly including a keypad... Doesn't look like it in the pictures, does it? But if you have Num Lock on, and hold the Fn key, the right side of your keyboard has blue numbers in the fashion of a keypad. That'll take some getting used to, but it's an interesting feature. The touch pad seems to work quite well, I like the solid buttons, which have a groove in the middle running lengthwise, which makes it easy to find them without looking. The little silk-screen scroll bars can be useful, but I very often find them difficult to make function. I end up having to tilt my finger to the side, press harder, etc, and hope it works. I often just end up ignoring them and using scroll bars instead. They also get in the way occasionally, when you're not used to them being there. When I'm not paying attention, I find that my finger likes to use the bottom of the touch pad, and I'm always getting the side scroll feature instead of moving the mouse. I'm sure, however, I'll get used to that with time.

The battery seems good, though I haven't done extensive testing with it such as video. It however seems to get a windows-base experience of about 6 hours, which is impressive to me, considering my old laptop lasted just over 2 hours.

My video card is able to run all my games, as well as all the advanced features of windows such as Aero. No problems, not much comment. It seems good. Has S-Video out, which is nice.

My wireless works very well, even though my wireless router sucks. When coming out of hibernation it usually takes about 10 seconds to reconnect to the wireless network. Occasionally the other network computers fail to show up in My Network, unless I leave it open for 10 minutes and refresh. However, I am getting good speeds, distance and connectivity. I detect half a dozen wireless networks within my one little apartment, from the people around me.

The Nylon Carrying case was a bit of a debate for me, but I decided to go with Dell considering it's a Dell notebook. I'm not disappointed. It fits everything nicely, has spots for papers, pens, AC adapter, mouse, etc, etc. The zipper on the pocket for the laptop has a spot when it comes together to put on a mini-padlock. The hand-handle and the shoulder strap are both solid and both have gel pads, making it quite comfy to lug around, even though I have a bad neck. The laptop is quite light in my opinion, though I haven't broken out the scale yet.

Now that I figured out how to make the Media Control Buttons work with winamp, I am quite happy with them. Very nice, easy way to skip songs, change the volume, etc. And who doesn't like the funky blue lighting?


All in all, it is a beautiful, solid, well working laptop. I am thoroughly impressed, and I highly recommend it.

 

Excellent review.

Reading this makes it that much harder to wait for my 6400!

 

i'm satisfied it