THE DELL INSPIRON 1520 LAPTOP

This is probably the first time that Dell is introducing colours to their computer systems after going for black designs in their XPS (The World's Thinnest 13.3" Notebook as of June 27th, 2007) laptop range. A good start I would say. I was waiting ages for them to introduce them as I am commissioned to find a laptop for my cousin who put importance in form over function. She was so negative about getting a Dell because they are all in so dull standard silver.











The colour kit choices are:
Jet Black with Matte Finish
Alpine White with Gloss Finish
Espresso Brown with Microsatin Finish
Ruby Red with Microsatin Finish
Midnight Blue with Microsatin Finish
Spring Green with Microsatin Finish
Flamingo Pink with Microsatin Finish
Sunshine Yellow with Microsatin Finish

I got her the Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop in Ruby Red Microsatin finish. I will compare the size with a NEC Versa E6200 which is of the same size. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9300 which has a 17” display so it will not be appropriate for comparison.









Here are its specifications:
Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2GHz
2GB RAM (2 X 1024MB) 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 nVidia GeForce 8600M GT
15.4' Widescreen WXGA (Resolution: 1280 X 800 X Hz) with TrueLife
Intel 4965AGN Wireless-N Mini-Card
120GB SATA Hard Drive
Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities
90W Primary AC Adapter (110V/220V)
9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion Battery
Creative built-in Webcam
ExpressCard slot
IEEE 1394 connector
4 USB connectors
Wired Network connector
8-in-1 Memory Card Reader (SD, SDIO, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, xD, Hi Speed-SD and Hi Density-SD cards)
Ruby Red Microsatin Finish
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium

The purchase of this laptop gives me the first hand experience of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium and the Microsoft Office 2007. The design is getting cooler and I love how the windows open up and close down. I hope it is not consuming more processing power and memory though. It is also my first hand experience of running Intel Core 2 Duo on a computer. It is surely fast and furious alright. We know that CPUs are practically stuck at the 3GHz mark with the current semiconductor technology so what they do is subdividing the cores with many marketing gimmicks like Hyper-Threading to dual and quad cores. Unfortunately, not all softwares make full use of such functions so it could be useless.









I like how they have this Resource Overview window where you can see how your CPU, Disk, Network and Memory is consuming the overall performance. This will give you a good hint on what is really the bottleneck in the performance from time to time. The internal design of the keyboard keys following the metallic surface around it is good. The old designs are always having black keys. The curves at the edges are getting better too and much nicer.