Any opinions on this laptop?

MrBillMrBill Missouri Member
edited November 2003 in Hardware
I am considering purchasing a Dell 5150 laptop. Since the only laptop I've ever used is an IBM Thinkpad 390x, I want your opinions, please.

$1,299 after rebate:

TECH SPECS

Processor/Display
Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processor,3.06GHz,15in SXGA+

Operating System
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

Memory
512MB,333MHz,2 DIMMs

Hard Drive
60GB2 Ultra ATA Hard Drive

Fixed CD/DVD Drives
24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive

Primary Battery
96 WHr Lithium-Ion Primary Battery

Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options
1 Year Limited Warranty3 plus 1 Year Mail-In Service

LINK

The wife has already said I can order it. :D


I don't have a problem with using Dell as I have a 5 year old P3-500 desktop that is used every day and has never once given a problem.

Comments

  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Not at all bad. Look at, and please post, the video chipset and display used, probably that is where they cut corners (other than the 2 256 RAM modules, AFAIK most Dell lappies only have two slots so you would be better with ONE 512MB module and not have to pull and replace to upgrade RAM-- you might want to bump the RAM spec at order time to 1 GIG, laptops SHARE MAIN RAM to video a lot adn high video apps will increase the amount the video chip needs to function. Dell laptops can run WARM, and the battery is likely to give about 2.5 hours of use between charges (make that less than 2 if the box has a DVD in it, then if you plan to use that get a spare battery if the laptop has a spare bay which will take a second battery or even if NOT).

    John.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2003
    Like Ageek said, you might see if they will sub 1-512 stick for the 2-256 sticks of ram as you only have 2 ram slots. Also, I highly recommend that you upgrade the warrantee to the 3 year mail in service with that Dell. My Inspiron 8000 has had the LCD backlight go out, the hard drive croak and the CDRW just recently died, all after the standard 1 year warrantee was over. I definitely came out on the good end of the deal when I bought the extra 2 years of warrantee.:D

    I don't know how good the Quadro FX Go5200 vid set is, but it's got to be better than that onboard Intel crap. At least it has 32 MB of discrete memory.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    MrBill, check out www.powernotebooks.com before you get the dell. I think you may find that you like the Sager NP5680/8890 (15, 16" screens, respectively) better.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Just be aware that the battery life on that thing is gonna be crapola. Also, find out what the video chip is. If it doesn't say ATI Mobility (either 9000 or 9600) look elsewhere, unless you don't plan on gaming :)
  • csimoncsimon Acadiana Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    looks great I want one!
  • MrBillMrBill Missouri Member
    edited November 2003
    Thanks for the input guys.

    I'm not overly concerned about battery life as it will rarely be on battery power. I think 512mb ram is plenty for me as I don't do anything that requires a lot of ram. We're basically talking about a "toy" here. I just want a reliable/fast/inexpensive one. :)


    Geeky1: The 128mb ATI 9600 looks good on the site you linked.

    I'm still looking....
  • ketoketo Occupied. Or is it preoccupied? Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Well, as I read down, I think everything is covered

    -it's gonna run hot...my IBM with a 1.8 P4 leaves a hotspot on my desk I can use for a coffee warmer.
    -GF5200 32MB vid is so-so but better than onboard. get ATI if poss.
    -do yourself a favour, get the 1G RAM, really

    If you'll never use it AS a lappy, get a real desktop, you can buy a helluva lotta system for that bread. Not to be taken as critisism, I'm jealous ur getting a new toy, whatever you decide.
  • MrBillMrBill Missouri Member
    edited November 2003
    keto had this to say
    If you'll never use it AS a lappy, get a real desktop, you can buy a helluva lotta system for that bread.
    I already have FIVE desktops ranging from a 1.2 Tbird to a xp2500 Barton. ;)
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    How much were you going to spend, tops?

    The Sager NP8890 is THE desktop replacement notebook. It'll take 4 hard drives internally (3 with an optical drive), 2 of which can be RAIDed (hardware raid) in 0 or 1, it's got the 865pe chipset, so it supports dual channel ddr, and it's got that 128MB 9600m Pro. Plus, with the i865pe, you can use ANY s478 CPU in it, up to and including the P4-EE.

    //Edit

    I should also note that both the Sager 5620 I bought from powernotebooks last june, and my mom's Powerpro she bought sometime early this year, have both been totally trouble-free.

    Powernotebooks has a 10.00 rating on resellerratings with >600 reviews, and their tech support is outstanding, as is sager's.
  • MrBillMrBill Missouri Member
    edited November 2003
    The $1299 is pretty much tops. My wife bitched about that because Dell has a laptop advertised for $799. :banghead:
  • celchocelcho Tallahassee, FL Member
    edited November 2003
    http://www.bensbargains.net/ktalk/1069342126,9569,.shtml

    on the 20th, two days ago, you could have gotten another 100 bucks off.


    why get 1gb of ram? 512 is plenty. by the time you need 1gb, you can put it in yourself. look at the price dell charges to go up to 1gb of ram. unless they are doing some kind of double ram for free deal there is no reason to get very much ram at all from them. maybe even getting 128 or 256 (whatever the minimum is) and just buying two 256's on your own might be the better deal.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    Looking @ that dell, it's got a Quadro graphics chip... which means that more than likely, you can kiss any hope of running any kind of game on it goodbye. The quadro is a workstation card. It's optimized for CAD/CAM, which likely means that it won't play DX stuff very well at all. (altho with 32mb of ram, it wouldn't be real fast, even with the right drivers...)

    If you can get a 5400rpm/7200rpm drive, do so. The 4200rpm drives are an unbelievably large bottleneck. Mine slows my laptop (2.4GHz P4/512MB DDR/ATi R7500m 64MB) to an absolute crawl sometimes.

    What were you going to use this for?
  • MrBillMrBill Missouri Member
    edited November 2003
    Geeky1 had this to say
    What were you going to use this for?

    Probably just to browse the internet mostly. Maybe some Excel/Word stuff, but nothing at all major.

    Oh, and for Folding of course. :D
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    don't run F@H on ANY laptop without additional cooling...
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Bahhh.. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: CENTRINO

    The Pentium M folds perfectly well with no extra cooling, is fast, with long battery life, and is cheap. I got my wife's laptop for $1200.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    The Centrino is the exception... I forgot.

    But even then, I wouldn't run it without extra cooling.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2003
    Uhh Geeky, I've been folding on my 1.0 P3 lappy for 2 years now, no problems due to folding. I've had other stuff break on it, but no cooling related problems. It's good for about 200 points/week with Gromacs.:D
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    So, I'm paranoid...

    I still don't think it's a good idea. At the very least, not for anything that's got a P4/Athlon chip (desktop OR mobile) in it... when I run F@H on my laptop, I use a 6.5" fan to pull air through the hsf exhaust vents. :D
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Yup, paraniod :D

    I've been folding pretty much 24/7 for the last several months on wifey's laptop with no additional cooling. In fact, the processor fan stays in lowspeed mode unless I kick on several other tasks. It's slightly warm to the touch on the bottom-- in fact the warmest part of the laptop is the base of the screen where it meets the body. The lights for the TFT run hotter than the processor.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    F@H runs fine on my 2.4ghz Desktop P4 Northwood laptop without any problems. Was running it for 4 weeks stright at one point, even with the screen closed. So its not ALL laptops, I mean if a Desktop P4 can deal with the heat then others shouldn't be that bad unless they are badly designed.

    NS
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Well, Dells bottom vent, mostly. Folks complain that the heat blowing out of bottom is excessive, unless you raise them on a lappie cooling riser. Second, Centrium chipsets will let the thing run coller by slowing down the CPU some. This happens above 2.4 GHz mostly. essentially, lappies should vent UP, but that is not possible on a multimedia lappie with bays and keyboard blocking where vents SHOULD be for ideal cooling. So, DELL vents down with forced airflow vertically reversed. The electronics are stable, thing is warm on BOTTOM which is where lap is. Higher CPU you go, the MORE heat your legs feel-- more fan force needed, and more heat blowing on legs. Put a Dell on a wood desk and it will die if not raised 1-2" off surface on a vented shelf, over a year to two period (depends on room ambient temp, I expect you also have a cooler environment than some others posting on this forum). That is what I was briefly referring to in earlier post, so will amplify given query and contradiction possibly (it isn't. your lappie is on speed edge that makes this a semi-non-sequitor-- your mileage is varying due to slower CPU and possibly different chipset and possibly different graphics chip,better ones run hotter than lesser ones).

    Shorty also posted about this with a boss's computer overheating on port conversion thing (dock with bottom solid or not very well vented for the Dell lappie specifically in question, it was a media wedge style dock with a DVD or burner in it, IIRC), whole laptop heated trying to vent heat conductively instead of convectively as laptop bottom was tight to dock bottom and dock was on a desk that probably was wood and did not conduct heat worth beans. CPU was UNDER keyboard, no bottom venting possible meant keyboard repeatedly died as the CPU heat was absorbed by the bottom of keyboard module and the keyboard controller chip overheated or fine circuit traces were deformed by heat or simple melted. Heat failure, again by overheat caused by insufficient bottom vent space.

    John.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    NS, you and I have the same laptop... I've run F@H on mine without extra cooling, too. It's never suffered any ill effects from it, either. However, you know how hot the air coming out of the heatsink on there can get- I've measured temperatures >140*F; Letting ANY CPU run that hot makes me nervous; I like to keep things <50*C at all times.

    However, I've found that lapping the heatsink and the P4's IHS made a world of difference... under normal use, the bottom of the laptop gets barely lukewarm; if I use it on my lap, and prop it up with one knee, so the side of the laptop with the CPU in it has nothing blocking it at all, the fan NEVER turns on, and the base of the computer stays at basically room temperature.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    A Guy made a program to measure the temps of the processor and you will hate to find out that the normal fan turns on at 60'c and the super fan turns on at 70. So you will find that your machine, even when idle, is rarely, if ever below 50 (thats what your temps will be if your fan is running intermittently). Though the fact you said that is quite strange, as I have a 2.4ghz and the fan is on 60% of the time. But still, you can work out the temps by when the fan is running.

    The machine shuts off at 80'c btw.

    NS
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    what program measures the temp on these things? I've been going nuts trying to find one...

    And lapping it made all the difference. The CPU and the hsf were lapped on a granite inspection block that's flat to +/- 0.001", and I used arctic silver ceramique to put it back together. The fan only runs when it's on a desk, basically. If the bottom of the computer is suspended in the air, it rarely (if ever) comes on.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Someone on the Sager forums made a program to test it. He also modded a BIOS to allow you to use a P4 3.2Ghz HT in out laptop too.

    www.sagerforums.com

    NS
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