Review for Dell Inspiron B130

Review for Dell Inspiron B130 by LankanDude

Overview and Introduction

This Laptop can be mainly considered as a budgeted laptop. If your requirements are minimum and your budget is limited I say go for it. Make no mistakes this is not for gaming and graphic designing, but more suitable for Microsoft Office related tasks and web browsing.




Given below is the exact specification of the laptop.

• Processor Intel® Celeron® M 380 (1.60 GHz/400MHz FSB/1M L2 Cache)
• LCD Panel 15.4in WXGA Display
• Memory 512MB DDR2 SDRAM 1 Dimm
• Video Card Integrated Intel® Media Accelerator 900 Graphics
• Hard Drive 40GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
• Modem and NIC Internal 56K Modem and Integrated Network Card
• Combo/DVD+RW Drives 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
• Wireless Networking Dell 1370 Internal Wireless (802.11b/g, 54Mbps)
• Primary Battery 4-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery (29 WHr)
• Warranty 1 Year

Reasons for Buying

This was bought to do office related tasks (Word, PowerPoint, Excel), e-mail and web browsing. But Some photo editing using Adobe PhotoShop and programming using Visual Studio .net is also been done.


Where and How Purchased

I bought this from Dell.com under their Education Personal Purchase Program, which gave me a 2% discount. I placed the order on 23-Aug-06 and the estimated shipping date given was 29-Aug-06. Since I ordered it via UPS 3-5 days delivery it’s estimated delivery date was 05-Sep-06. But it was actually shipped on 25-Aug-06 and I received it on 31-Aug-06. I received an email when the order was shipped and the UPS tracking number was provided in that. It was able to track the package exactly using the number via UPS web site.

Given below is the price of the notebook.



With the given configurations I’m happy about the price and think it’s a good deal.


Build & Design
Body casing is created using plastic, but it’s quite sturdy. No carbon fiber covers. Laptop can be opened and closed without any weird creaking sounds. I’m happy with its build quality. The hinges are firm, there's no wobble of the screen even if you move the notebook around. The look of the Inspiron B130 is a mix of silver and black. The lid is an entirely silver-grey color while the rest of the body is black with an accent of silver trim around the keyboard. For me the pure silver look of Inspiron other models looks better, but still the look is fine for a budgeted notebook.


Above view of Dell Inspiron B130


Back of Dell Inspiron B130

Screen
The Inspiron B130 is a widescreen notebook that uses a WXGA resolution (1280 x 800). The screen is a matte finish and there is no option for the popular glossy high-contrast display finish that Dell calls "TrueLife". When on AC power the screen is bright enough, but when you switch to battery it becomes too dim -- you can adjust your display and power settings to force the screen to be brighter when on battery but at the cost of shorter battery life. Overall, the text and images are sharp and the matte screen means you won't get a bunch of reflection on the screen that can become distracting.


LCD Panel of Dell Inspiron B130

There's some light leakage around the bottom area as shown the picture given below.


Light leakage from LCD Panel of Dell Inspiron B130


Speakers
The speakers are located on the right and left front sides, which is good placement since they fire forward to where you are sitting. For me the speakers are good enough for playing audio music or DVDs, but not much quality. Don’t expect any 3D surround sounds with subwoofers. This is not for movie enthusiastic, but for people like me who just wanted to watch the movie I say its fine. I haven’t tried any external speakers, so no comments about it.


Speakers of Dell Inspiron B130

Processor and Performance
Since I was looking for a budgeted laptop I stayed with Celeron rather than spending a fortune on a Pentium. I have never owned a Pentium (but I have used them, in my office). I was always happy with Celeron and after that a PC with AMD Semprone. But then again this is more of a personnel choice, if you in to more demanding applications like Games you won’t like this.

Benchmarks
Following is the out put generated by program Super Pi to calculate the number Pi to 2-million digits of accuracy.



Given below are the HD Tune results for the hard drive.





Heat and Noise [/B
The B130 is amazingly quiet; in fact I can't recall the fan making any noise. But the optical drive does make some amount of noise when booting up the machine and during its usage. The heat vent for the B130 is on the back of the notebook, this is good positioning because you won't get hot air blowing onto your hand when using a mouse or anything. You can rest your wrist on the notebook without burning yourself.


Heat vent of Dell Inspiron B130

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard on the B130 is fine. The keys have a nice click when pressed, but are not loud. The buttons are all full size, including full size Backspace, Enter and Shift keys. There are no problems with the keyboard. The touchpad is as usable as they get, its size is appropriate and there's enough room to move your finger around.


Keyboard and Touch Pad of Dell Inspiron B130

Input and Output Ports

• 3 USB 2.0 (all on left side)
• VGA/monitor out (left side)
• Modem (left side)
• RJ-11 Ethernet (left side)
• Audio line-out (for speakers headphones) (left side)
• External microphone port (left side)
• ExpressCard 34 expansion slot (left side)
• Power jack (back side)





Wireless
It works well and I've been getting good range, no dropped connections using this card.

Battery
When using the B130 for simple with screen brightness set to half the battery ran out after 1hours and 50 minutes. Therefore if you are going to use this on the battery for longer durations invest on a battery upgrade.

Operating System and Software
The B130 has the option of Windows XP Home or Professional. I got Home and that is more than enough for my work. But the system is loaded with all the garbage software under the sun. At first when I booted the machine and started working I couldn’t work for every 5 minutes at straight without been disturbed by some kind of a trial program.
Since Dell didn’t give the option of purchasing the reinstallation disk, I had to find a disk from somewhere else. Formatted the C partition and installed windows again. After installing windows I used a third party partition tool the partition the disk. I didn’t want to use fdisk and wipe out the entire disk, since Dell has two hidden partitions for its Ghost images. I kept them intact to use in an emergency.
Another minus point for Dell was there were no Device Drivers supplied with the notebook. So if you are doing a clean installation make sure you have downloaded all the drivers from the Dell site.

Customer Support (N/A)
I haven’t dealt with Dell Customer support up to now, so no rating on that.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a budgeted notebook then this would be a good choice. I’m happy with it so far. But don’t expect it to be a killer; it’s just a regular notebook for day to day use.
Pros
• Decent looking design but not as appealing as some higher-end Inspirons
• 5400RPM hard drive is impressive for a budget PC
• Cheap, $515
• Overall decent build and sturdy feeling for a budget PC
Cons
• Very basic selection of ports
• Screen is just okay, light bleeds from the bottom
• Lots and lots of junk ware installed that you'll want to remove (I will give extra minus points for this)

Credit: I extracted some comments from another review, since that’s the same way I feel and it’s not worthwhile that I’m typing the same thing again. I would like to thank the author of that review, abaxter for that.

 

thanks for the review LankanDude, the price really is good on the B130, and while there's nothing sexy or outstanding about this notebook -- it gets the job done at a cheap price for basic computing needs in a mobile fashion.

 

You have to hand it to Dell for making good systems available at great prices. The B130 is definitely no exception to that!

Thanks for the review, it definitely gives some insight into this budget system.

 

i checked this model out at a store in my school.
there were d620 and this one and let me tell you..
this one was much better for me.

the main issue was display and heat.
while d620 was very hot and had terrible display,this model
was pretty decent.

nice review and good job.