I recently purchased a new Dell Inspiron E1705 through the Dell Employee Purchase Program (EPP), and I am very impressed with it. Before buying it I had researched a number of different portables, but as with a lot of people, the Dell discounts won me over. The combination of the hardware options and the savings was just too good to beat. The cost information below can actually be brought down even more than what was listed. I purchased an additional power adapter so I could leave one at work all the time, and I also purchased a backpack carrying case. These items came to about $59 extra.
Technical Specs:
Inspiron E1705
Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2300 (1.66GHz/667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
LCD Panel 17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
Memory 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
Video Card 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS
Hard Drive 60GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
AC Power Adapters 90 Watt Spare AC Adapter
Operating System (Office software not included) Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
Network Card Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
Combo/DVD+RW Drives 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
Sound Options Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy® ADVANCED HD Audio
Wireless Networking Cards Intel® PRO 3945 and Dell 350 Bluetooth Internal Wireless Cards
Office Software (not included in Windows XP) No productivity suite- Corel WordPerfect word processor only
Anti-Virus/Security Suite (Pre-installed) No Security Subscription
Primary Battery 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Carrying Cases Large Backpack Carrying Case
Hardware Warranty 1Yr Ltd Warranty, 1Yr Mail-In Service, and 1Yr HW Warranty Support
Dial-Up Internet Access 6 Months of America Online Membership Included
Mobile Broadband No Broadband Expresscard technology is available in the market now
Operating System Re-Installation CD Genuine Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition re-installation CD
Dell Digital Entertainment Starter Entertainment Pack - Basic digital Music, Photo and Game experience
Ports and Connections:
1 x S-Video port
1 x VGA port
1 x DVI port
1 x modem jack
1 x network jack
6 x USB ports
1 x Firewire port
1 x PCMCIA slot
Headphone and Mic jacks
SD/MMC slot
Cost and Savings:
Configured Total: $2144
Dell EPP/FSS customers $750 Off: -$750.00
Dell EPP/FSS Free Shipping: -$49.00
Dell EPP/FSS 6% Discount: -$83.64
Tax $78.62
Total $1,388.98
I had read about several problems on various sites that were a concern in my choice of this portable, namely: heat problems, backlight bleeding, and screen reflection problems. As it turns out I got lucky and had none of the problems other people had mentioned. The temp. sits around the mid 20s when I'm just surfing the Net, and rose to about the mid 50s while running 3DMark06. The 3DMark06 score with all stock drivers was 3477. I haven't yet tweaked the drivers to see if I can improve on the score.
I have not noticed any backlight bleeding. I've watched several DVDs in the dark and have not noticed any bleeding along the bottom edge of the screen. At first I was disappointed in the look of DVDs, everything seemed grainy, but eventually figured out that the brightness was up to high and that by turning it down it really improved the picture. Although I do have to keep increasing the brightness when I want to do anything but watch movies as the screen is much too dark to be able to do anything in Windows after watching a DVD.
As far as the screen reflections, well the Truelife is one of the glossy screens and if you have a black desktop you can certainly see a clear reflection. I have not yet tried it outside in the sun. The viewing angles all seem to be OK, there isn't much in the way of privacy, anyone sitting next to you on a plane could easily see what you're doing.
The machine came with a lot of bloatware on it, a 90 day trial of Norton Ghost, McAfee, Google Desktop, Musicmatch Jukebox, etc. A lot of people choose to completely reformat upon receiving their new Dell laptop, however I chose to just uninstall the bloatware using "Add/Remove Programs", and then I ran CCleaner to tidy up a few things. If people need help reformatting, there is a reformat guide posted at: »forum.notebookreview.com/showthr···?t=42340
One area of disappointment: battery life. I did not purchase any additional batteries, or upgrade to the 9-cell version, so this is partly my fault. With a full charge, using the wireless card, I get about 2 hours and 5 mins of life. I have not gone through and tweaked the machine to improve the battery life. I may look into purchasing a new 9-cell battery and try one of those.
The native resolution for this screen type is 1920 x 1200, which can be a problem for some people bc of the size of the text. I would suggest making a trip it Best Buy or some other store that sells laptops and looking at the various resolutions to determine what you like. While you are there, lift the laptops and get a feel for the weight, around 8lbs the E1705 is not light.
The laptop does feature the MediaDirect option: instead of booting Windows on the machine, you can power up in MediaDirect mode and watch DVDs that way.
I really have nothing bad to say about the machine. It's solidly built, looks great (although some people don't like the white), and performs great. I have only had it for a few days, so maybe later down the road I will find something about it I don't like, hehe.
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by garethsk  edited by fire100
last modified: 2006-06-03 16:06:10 |
