Dell Inspiron 1501
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The Dell Inspiron 1501 is a 15.4" widescreen
notebook now available with the AMD Sempron, Turion
or Turion X2 processor. The Inspiron 1501 has a subset
of the Intel based Inspiron e1505 features and carries
the same basic design and build as that popular laptop.
Unfortunately, Dell cut features on the Inspiron 1501
but didn't cut its price a whole lot relative to the
e1505. Unless you really want an AMD processor, it's
hard to recommend this machine over the only slightly
more expensive and better e1505.
The Inspiron 1501 reviewed here is configured as
follows:
* AMD Sempron 3500+ (1.8GHz/512Kb)
* 15.4" Ultrasharp WXGA display
* 512GB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz (1 DIMM)
* ATI Xpress 1150 256MB HyperMemory (Integrated graphics)
* 60GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
* 24x CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
* 6-cell 53 WHr lithium-ion battery
* Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
* Dell 1390 802.11g Mini Wireless Card
Build and Design
The Inspiron 1501 matches much of the Dell lineup
clad in painted silver with white trim on top and
a black underside. The color scheme is simple and
there's nothing to rave or rant about honestly, I'm
not a huge fan of the white trim "bumpers"
though. Also, as time goes by the current Inspiron
design is becoming stale, Dell needs to update their
consumer laptop look, and soon. The Inspiron 1501
is in fact precisely the same look and build as the
Inspiron e1505 -- except several media buttons are
missing from the 1501, more on that later.
The notebook is sturdy enough to feel comfortable
lifting it by one corner. It's not rugged or as well
built as many business laptops, such as a ThinkPad
or Dell's own Latitude line -- the screen latch is
plastic as opposed to metal on a Latitude for instance.
But the Inspiron 1501 is not flimsy by any means,
the only real flex I could find on the casing was
at the top just above the keyboard.
The back of the screen is plastic, but very sturdy
and a hard push won't make ripples appear. The hinges
are sturdy and well damped. As mentioned before, the
screen latch is plastic, but I'd rather have a plastic
latch than the magnetic opening mechanism that some
manufacturers are using -- they're so invariably hard
to open.
One knock against the build is that Dell uses a plastic
dummy to fill in the slot for the ExpressCard opening
when it's not in use. It looks cheap, feels cheap
and awkward not to mention the plastic piece is begging
to be lost if you remove it. Unfortunately, many manufacturers
use this approach instead of integrated flaps to protect
the notebook from dust when the slot isn't in use.
Screen
The screen on this Inspiron 1501 is the WXGA (1280x800)
matte screen. Overall the screen is fairly sharp with
nice saturated colors and high contrast. Brightness
is good, next to my everyday ThinkPad T43 it certainly
stands out as being much better. The lamp for backlighting
is at the bottom of the screen, you can feel the bottom
of the screen being slightly warm as an indicator
of this, but light leakage is minimal so by looking
you couldn't really tell where the light is coming
from -- in other words the screen is evenly lit.
One very positive thing I find with this screen is
that there's no "sparkle" or graininess
sometimes complained about with other Dell screens.
When you're viewing a white screen it is indeed all
white, you can't detect any unwanted artifacts. This
is the first matte screen from Dell I've had in some
time, usually I go for glossy, which is better for
things like DVD viewing but annoying for working long
hours with in office environments due to screen reflection.
As forementioned, brightness is good. When on battery
you could bump the brightness down (using Fn + Arrow
Down) to level three or four out of seven and still
have very comfortable viewing.
The vertical viewing angles are quite poor, meaning
that if you look at this screen at an angle other
than perpendicular (head on) then colors will look
odd, usually darker than intended and contrast will
be whacky. So long as you're viewing head on this
isn't a problem.
Speakers
The speaker performance of the 1501 is fine. In the
world of notebooks, they are quite good even. Of course
there is no bass but they seem to play low enough
to make voices sound natural. They also play loud,
for a notebook, without distortion. They point forward,
and project the sound into a room so several people
could easily watch a movie.
AMD Sempron Processor and Performance / Benchmarks
I've been spoiled of late reviewing a bunch of Intel
Core 2 Duo laptops. Boy is the AMD Sempron ever a
reality check as I merge into the information technology
equivalent of the slow lane.
So why did I choose the Sempron knowing it would
be slow? Basically, I wanted to buy this AMD based
laptop for cheap, the price I got before taxes was
$559. I think the whole selling point for the Inspiron
1501 is that it's kind of on par with the Inspiron
e1505 but cheaper -- at least you would think. We'll
investigate whether that holds later.
Anyway, I digress.
From a perceived performance standpoint, the Sempron
3500+ laptop with 512MB of RAM "feels" slow.
MS Word doesn't open immediately, it takes a couple
of seconds. Web page rendering feels sluggish at times.
If you get hyperactive moving the cursor around Start
menu programs then you'll notice icon graphics taking
a while to render. If you go to the Add or Remove
Programs Control Panel feature in Windows it takes
a long time to populate the program list (you look
at "please wait while the list is populated"
for at least 15 seconds upon entering that for the
first time). And multi-tasking can be a bit of a slog,
while ripping a CD and opening thePCMark05 benchmark
program I clicked on the "show desktop"
icon and nothing registered for quite some time as
the system tried to keep up with all the tasks being
demanded of it.
However, in all fairness, if you're more a "one
thing at a time" person and don't juggle between
programs or try and do 10 things at once, the Sempron
will get you through what you need. Of course any
Office application works fine and surfing the web
is quite seamless, although web page rendering can
sometimes be noticeably slower on this laptop.
Let's look at some benchmarks to get a feel for how
the 1501 configured with a Sempron stacks up.
PCMark05 gives a good rating for overall system performance,
as you can see below, the 1501 with a Sempron is quite
a bit slower than Core Duo and faster AMD machines.
(Read more at http://www.notebookreview.com)
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