Dell Inspiron™ E1705 PC Notebook

DELL Inspiron E1705:

Inspiron Series:

The Inspiron series was designed for the hip, new generation users as well as for the high-end power users. It showcases stylish design and a great price, unlike the Latitudes which are usually dull/uninspiring to look at but very robust business laptops. The Inspirons are priced less than comparable Latitudes.

Out of the Box:

The drabby brown box is typical DELL, all the bells & whistles are inside, not on the box. The box contains:
1. The E1705 Laptop,
2. Driver CD & OS re-install CD (option), and software CDs (DVD player, DVD burner, dell media center etc.)
3. Power adapter & cables
4. S-video cable (to connect the laptop to the TV)
5. DVI cable for connecting to a digital monitor
6. User manual & quick setup guide

Design:

Laptop body:
True to the E-series laptops, the E1705 looks very similar to the Inspiron 6000 ( http://www.epinions.com/content_223346134660 ), in terms of color combination, multimedia buttons & keyboard layout. The laptop is predorminantly silver with white edges. The silver is finger print resistant, thats good, it does not catch any visible dirt off sweaty hands. The white edges on my 1 1/2 old inspiron 6000 did develope one minute crack on each corner of the laptop and I think this could be the problem with the E1705 too. But the cracks are very very minute.
I/O ports:
This Laptop is loaded with I/O ports, it has more USB ports than any other E-Series laptops and new to the E1705 is the DVI video out to connect to an external digital monitor. There is also a analog video out and S-video out
1 x mini Firewire
6 x USB 2.0 (4 pin connectors)
Digital Video Interface (DVI)
RJ45 (Ethernet) and RJ11 (modem port)
Video – 15 pin and S-video – 7 pin connectors
5-in-1 removable memory card reader
Audio jacks for speakers and microphone mini-connectors.
Keyboard & Touchpad:
New to this model is the flex-keyboard, it is supposed to enhance the ease of the keyboard usage. The Keyboard is well laid out, the key placement is in the right places and are easy to reach. The keys are very responsive and make soft clicks. The touch pad is neat and is silver in color. It has the up-down & left-right scroll built into it. The touchpad too is very responsive and better than the one on the Latitude. Apart from the touchpad, there is also a mouse button between the "G,H,B" keys and the corresponding left & right clicks for those not used to touch pads.
Multimedia controls:
The multimedia controls are placed in the front of the laptop and can be accessed while the laptop cover is closed. New to the Inspiron series is the fact that you can watch pictures from the inbuilt memory card or listen to music and watch DVDs while the laptp is powered off. This is a convenient feature, since the laptop need not be ON to listen to the music & also it saves on the valuable battery charge.
Graphics card and LCD:
There are 2 options for the graphics cards, (1) Integrated Intel graphics media accelerator 950 and (2) 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON x1400 HyperMemory. The ATI card is way better and supports higher screen resolutions. The LCD screen is a beauty. At 17 inches, it is widescreen, making the laptop look very cool. There are 3 choices while choosing the LCD screen, Active Matrix WXGA (1280 x 800 max screen resolution, 1 mega pixel rating) and the Active Matrix WXGA with TrueLife (1280 x 800 max screen resolution and 1 mega pixel rating) and WSXGA+ with TrueLife (1680 x 1050 max screen resolution and 1.76 mega pixels) The third option, WXGA+ with TrueLife combined with the ATI graphics card is brilliant, this is a must have for a techie. It offers acres of desktop space.
Battery:
The 9 cell battery is supposed to give 4 hours of power to the laptop. The 4 hour battery life for a 17in screen is good, especially the screen is so brilliant and bright. But the battery life is far from stellar.
Sound card/speakers:
Here again there are 2 options, the integrated stereo sound and the Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy Advanced HD audio. The HD audio is much better and sounds more crisper. For just $30 more it is a good upgrade. The built-in speakers are louder than most laptops I used. But if you use your laptop for listening to music, I would suggest getting external laptop speakers. The built-in speakers are good, but they sound flat and their frequency response is limited. Though laptop speakers are prone to this problem, Sony has one laptop that has a built-in subwoofer... thats cool.
Hard disk & DVD/CD driver:
Dell offers tons of options for laptop hard disks. I did not see so much choice on anyother brand. You can choose from 40, 60, 80 and 100 GB hard disks in 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm. The hard drive is the slowest part in a computer and choosing the fastest hard drive (7200 rpm) is always good. The DVD/CD ROM drive is fixed and cannot be removed unlike the Latitudes. There is an option of a CD RW/DVD ROM drive and DVD RW/CD RW drive. Both drives offer 24x/10x/24x for CD and 8x for DVD read & write.

Performance and Usage:
The E1705 is very very big and heavy, especially if you are used to smaller laptops. Even though it is only 1.44 inches thick and starting weight is 8 lbs, it can very quickly increase when adding the options like 9 cell battery, DVD drive etc. My laptop weighs 10.8 lbs and carrying it on a daily basis can be a real pain. The Wide-screen is a beauty, looks very good and it is very bright. The E1705 performance is based on the processor, there are 5 choices of processors, 1.66 MHz Solo, 1.66 Mhz/1.86 Mhz/2.0 Mhz/2.16 MHz Dual core processors. Needless to say the higher processor speed the better the performance. The RAM memory too makes a lot of difference. It supports max 2GB of Dual Channel 667MHz DDR2 memory, and I find the 1 GB to be sufficient for now. The laptop is very fast, especially with the dual core processor. In performance tests I have found the Pentium M DualCore 1.66 MHz is 130% better than the Pentium M 1.66 MHz Solo processor. Though it may not seem to be much, but consider this, the performance difference on an average new processor to the previous model is just 110%. The laptop came with a lot of junk software installed (might be useful to some), I uninstalled most of them and the memory utilization has dropped from 620MB to 430MB. And the performance has only been better. The installed DELL’s multimedia software is good, it is feature rich and comprehensive.

The many ports are very convenient. Connecting the E1705 to the TV via the S-video or DVI is very simple. The mini-Firewire is very useful too, especially when dumping the video from a camcorder to the laptop. The 6 USB ports are more than adequate. I connect external speakers when using the laptop as a media player, there is a world of a difference. The built in speakers are loud enough but produce flat tones. The multimedia buttons are accessible when the laptop cover is closed, that’s a nice touch and the fact that you can play DVDs,CDs and memory card media while the laptop is OFF, is really cool.

Customer Support:

Customer Support has been Dell’s selling point. Since there are hardly any stores to check out the products before buying them, the customer service is available 24x7x365. The customer service personnel seem to bend over backwards to help the customers. I received a $100 coupon for complaining about some issue that dell messed up. That sure shut me up with a smile. Most hardware failures are replaced free of charge. (within the warranty) and repairing is out of question. The wait time on the phone is minimal. Having said that, the skill level of the average customer service personnel seems to be not up to standards. But if an issue is not resolved, it is promptly forwarded to a more knowledgeable person.

Intend market:

Thi laptop is so heavy that it seems to be a bridge between a desktop and a laptop. It is not meant for carrying it around on a daily basis. This model is targetted as a desktop replacement in homes. It has a big screen like a typical home desktop would have. and probably more powerful than the desktop it replaced. With options to connect to externat analog & digital monitors, there is a scope to have a bigger monitor. With tons of I/O ports, it is ideal for connecting devices like camcorder, digital camera, webcam, MP3 player, USB flash cards, SD card etc.

Some Issues:
1. Laptop is loaded with junk software that hogs up the memory and bringing down the laptop’s performance.
2. Hard disk is rated at 100 GB, but the effective space is only 86 GB, because DELL has some space hidden for the OS restore. But loosing 14 GB for that is way too much. Also this is not mentioned anywhere on the Dell website.
3. Not as modular as the latitude – the Inspiron has a fixed CD/DVD bay, meaning it cannot be easily replaced with a Floppy drive or external hard disk like in a Latitude.

Some things to note:
1. When buying any DELL search for dell coupons online before buying it. There are coupons upto $750 off.
2. Find a dell store around you, usually they are in malls. Look at the product and use it before you buy it online. Never buy in the store, they offer no discounts. Buying online can save you tons of money
3. Laptop being a fairly long term investment, always buy the best configuration you can afford. With technology changing so fast, your laptop could get out-dated in as little as 8 months. So get the highest configuration you can afford.
4. Always choose the laptop size based on what you use it for, if you need to carry it around, you might want to choose a smaller/lighter one like the Inspiron 1405 . If you use it primarily at home to watch movies, it is ok to get a large screen maybe a 15.4 inch (Inspiron E1505)or a 17 inch (inspiron E1705.)
5. when choosing the RAM memory, always choose the highest you can afford and also choose the RAM in a single module. Laptops have only 2 slots for memory modules, if you choose 1 GB in 2 x 512 MB modules, any upgrade would render one module useless, if not both.


Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 1549
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50