Dell Inspiron 510m

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Dell Inspiron 510m



As many people know, I only use laptops :D, I currently use a Dell Inspiron 510m à(Located here)ß here are my views on this machine:

The Dell Inspiron 510m combines high performance, High price!, stability and good looks! This laptop is a bit on the pricy side, coming in at a minimum of £739 this price, provided by dell, is a lot too low, I paid £1,639 for my top-of-the-range model Specs Below:

Inspiron 510m, Pentium M 755 (2.0 GHz, 2MB, 400MHz), 15.0” SXGA+ LCD Screen
256MB 333MHz DDR Memory (1X256MB) ***
40GB (5,400rpm) IDE Hard Disk
64MB Graphics controller
8x DVD+RW Drive With Sonic record now and My DVD
32Whr 4 cell LI-ION Battery ***
Deluxe Executive carry case
2100 Intel Pro Wireless card
3 Years Next business day, on site warranty
Windows XP Home


*** RAM upgraded to 512MB, spare battery bought



Well, This is a great laptop, I have had a few crashes with is, nothing that a re-start didn’t fix, I am constantly playing High power games (GTA-VC) on it, sometimes for days on end, without any problems what so ever!


It will do any task it is set, without problems, and is great for on the move, it comes with a two and a half hour battery, but with the upgraded 4 hour battery, I have the ability to use this laptop for six and a half hours in the car / plane. It uses low power to run applications such as watching a DVD, or writing a word document, but if I started playing games in the car, the power would go pretty quickly


The only problems that I have had with it that I cannot fix are with windows media player it will not import MPEG-2 file’s (This happens on any computer) and when I wanted to find some drivers on dell’s website, I put in the service tag, and it cannot be found! Those problems have nothing to do with the laptop itself!


I found a very weird thing with it, when ordering it, it mentioned nothing about Norton Internet security, but I opened the box, and there was a free copy of NIS2004!

A final thing: something I have noticed with this laptop compared to my old one is, when closing the lid I have told it to put itself in to standby, but when you open it, it will resume from standby, this did not happen with my old Inspiron 5100

It has a benchmark score (3DMark2001 - SE): 1965


So, you are paying for extreme quality and stability with the added bonus that you know they will fix any problem that comes up, without spending months trying to convince them it was not your fault, Stick with Dell, a name you can trust!!!


I hope some people found this review useful, it is not the best, but it gets my opinion across


I am the first person to post in the user reviews section!:)



KGB-911



Pictures below! - Sorry, I was trying to take pictures of my laptop, but my camera is dead, new batteries, but nothing happening! so i got these off the Dell website



Please post all comments below!
 

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Last edited:
Nice review KGB, do you happen to have any benchmarks of the graphics system, or any examples of how well it performs? I'd be interested to see how well modern games can run on a good laptop :)
 
Nice reveiw man, maybe some benchmarks would top it off though. Maybe 3DMark03 as it is the most popular at the moment. PCMark04 would be good too. There all free to download from www.futuremark.com ;).
 
Sorry, im not that high-tec, what is a benchmark?

I have a feeling that they are scores given to PC's but i am not shure, so what are they?

KGB
 
I am having problems! it will not download - i have been trying all afternoon!

HELP ME!
 
3dMark 2005 only works with DirectX9 compatible cards plus it needs at least 128 mb of ram for the graphics board. I doubt this the Dell will be able to handle the extremes. 3dMark 2003 may work depending on the card support. Check details before you download and start the tests.
 
It is a huge file, evan on broadband!

Quad, my Laptop's specs are above the minimum specs...
 
I was talking about the VGA not the laptop specs, your laptop has shared architecture which can go to a max of 64 MB and the new 3DMark requires 128mb so you have basically half the memory of the required specs of 3dmark 2005.

Sorry I was not very clear in my last message
 
Taken from majorgeeks site on 3dmark 2005:

System Requirements:
- DirectX 9 compatible graphics adapter with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 or later, and graphics memory of 128 MB or above.
 
Didn't see that!

I spent 2 hurs downloading it, but when i came to install it, nothing happened, i am now downloading the 03 version, will this one work, i can't find the specs!

KGB
 
OK, downloaded the 03 version,

score: 90 (ninty) - after looking on there site and most people were up in th high thousands, i think that something went wrong! can it be this low?

KGB
 
KGB-911,

Laptops generally come up with very low figures and in your case I would not be surprised since you have shared architecture when it comes to graphics card, meaning you do not have a stand alone graphics card with its own memory. You have a system which shares the memory with main memory so if you alot 64 mb to graphics contoller it will be taken from the 512 you have on your system. Computers with shared architecture are basically a compromise when it comes to graphics.

Despite of all this you need to tweak your system fully before you test out the 3dmark software for benchmarking. Your system should be virus free, hard disk should be defragmented, anti virus switched off, all updates installed, clean boot before the start of 3dmark software etc etc.

Laptops with stand alone graphics card of 128 mb ram are more suitable for gaming, one of the laptops comes to mind is an IBM T41p, although it is not a gaming machine but it meets the specs of 3dmark 2005, I think they may have come up with a new one as well T42p but not sure. These laptops are top of the line when it comes to graphics and designers find it very handy. They are not cheap at almost 3000 quid!

There was another thread where this discussion took place and the most of us had the same thing to say to the prospective buyer - laptops are not equipped for for serious gaming, at least not yet!
 
Mine handles all games, no problem.

that program was complaning that it could only complete one test, could this be a problem?

KGB
 
KGB-911,

That sure is a problem!

The specs are not upto the standard the 3dmark requires.

You should check the gaming on proper desktops and you will notice a very big difference in graphics quality. Handling the games is not a problem, the main thing is how good the quality of graphics are.
 
Nice review...but... I don't think i could justify spending a whole thousand pounds on a laptop that dosent perform as well as some £300 computers.

My sisters PC (Athlon XP2000, 256Mb DDR266, 40Gb 5400rpm, 64Mb shared GeForce 2 MX graphics) managed to scrape 92 points.

That will play BF1942 and everything no probs either...

£1000 does seem far too pricey...
 
Guys,

The importance of graphics card should not be underestimated in case one is benchmarking by using the futuremark software. If the graphics is not upto standard even a 6 Ghz machine will give you 100 or 200 points.

I remember when I did the test 4 years back using 3dmark 2000, my score with a Matrox card was 2900 with a PIII machine with 667 Mhz processor and 256 MB CL2 Ram. The hard disk was a Quantum Fireball Plus 7200rpm with 8ms seek time (one of the fastest drives in those days). The newer software has different scoring but the score I had achieved was second fasted with the given spec having a Matrox G400 card.

The newer software concentrates on Directx 9 graphics card only with atleast 128 mb ram, anything lower will either not run on this software or will yield very low score.
 
Chris, just to annoy you mere, it was £1,600!

Quad, i will try 3DMark01 to see if that works!

KGB
 
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