Dell Inspiron 5000e Notebook Review Birmingham AL

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Originally published at Internet.com

There are always tradeoffs when designing a notebook. Pick two of three: fast, durable, and inexpensive. It is a challenge to find a laptop with all of those three characteristics rolled into one design. The tradeoffs for notebooks usually involve weight, features, battery life, speed, and price. Dell knows this and offers a wide variety of notebook computers to meet various consumers needs. Different products have different trade-offs, and Dell's build-to-order online purchasing system allows you to customize your system even further.

Dell's newest mid-sized model, the Inspiron 5000e, trades lightweight in favor of more features. This is not a full-size laptop. It is a mid-size, three-spindle laptop with near-full size features, and it has style, something generally lacking in the laptop world.

Dell Inspiron 5000e Notebook Features

* Pentium III 800MHz * 440BX chipset motherboard * 128MB PC100 SDRAM * 15" 1400x1050 LCD * ATI Rage Mobility 128 w/16MB SGRAM * 30GB 4200rpm hard drive * 8x/24x DVD/CDROM drive * Integrated floppy drive * ~7.5lbs with battery and DVD drive

Summary

Price as Tested: US$3,400.00

Highs: * 15" SXGA+ (1400x1050) LCD * Fully featured * Strong 2D/3D performance for a notebook

Lows: * Price as configured * Weight

Overall: It performs quite well in business applications and reasonably well in 3D, especially for a notebook. It has highly impressive battery life, a full feature-set, plenty of versatility, and solid build quality.

The Hard Stuff

As you can see from the basic specifications, the Inspiron 5000e is a full-featured laptop, so read on as we take a closer look at it in action.The Inspiron 5000e we tested came with an 800MHz Pentium III processor. An 800MHz processor provides more than enough power for most of today's uses, in the business world. 128MB of SODIMM SDRAM gave the pre-installed Windows 2000 OS plenty of RAM in which to run free. 12MB is bordering on ample for Windows 2000 and every office application we ran on the system was plenty fast.

An IBM 30GB HD provides more room than most people will ever need, and while it was on the small size compared to desktop drives, it did perform to our satisfaction. Obviously the RPM speed of laptop drives is roughly 20% slower and there is a general bottleneck with laptop hard drives. Those of you used to using desktop drives with speeds of 7200rpm should note that laptop hard drives usually range from 4200-4700rpm. A quick check on the Dell web site showed us that they do not offer the 30GB drive as an option right now, but they do offer a 32GB option.

An 8x/24x DVDROM drive provided reasonably quick software installs and enabled us to play DVD movies. Obviously watching DVD movies at work is probably not on your list of requirements for a mobile PC but on those long haul flights it is always a pleasant alternative tto be able to take advantage of. For those of you that don't want to battle with the temptation and distraction of DVD, Dell also offers a CD-ROM drive instead for a few bucks less. The drive mounts in a hot-swappable bay on the center front of the machine. The battery installs on the right front and the integrated floppy is stuck on the back left side. A second battery can be installed in the DVD's bay.

All the removable parts have latches on the bottom of the machine. This is a frustrating design since, unless you practice, you have to turn the machine on its side or upside down in order to catch the latch and pull out a module or battery. There is a PC card slot on the right back of the machine, and Dell sells optional PC Card Ethernet and modems for it. You can also get an optional 56K modem in an internal expansion slot. Our test machine came with this internal modem.

Video

For video, the Inspiron 5000e uses an ATI Rage Mobile 128, a.k.a. M3, matched with 16MB of video memory. The standard amount is 8MB, but we strongly recommend the $49 16MB option if you are at all interested in better all-round performance. 2D performance is excellent, and as fast as we have yet seen on a mobile PC. The dual-head feature allows you to use an external monitor along with the LCD. There is also an SVHS output on the back of the machine for TV presentations.

In our subjective testing, the 16MB of SGRAM allowed reasonable performance at up to 800x600. Our Inspiron 4000 model, which only had 8MB of SGRAM, did not do nearly so well since, even at low resolutions, it often had to resort to AGP memory texturing.

Currently the ATI M3 chip is the best overall 2D/3D solution you can get for mobile PCs but that should change relatively soon, with NVIDIA's soon to be released Geforce2Go chip based upon their NV11, Geforce2MX chip.

The LCD

The 15" SXGA+ (1400x1050) LCD that came with our test Inspiron 5000e is beyond gorgeous. At 15", it provides 117dpi! It is amazingly readable. Sure, it's not a piece of paper, but in a few generations, LCDs may be so easy to read that they will be just like a piece of paper. It is easily the best screen we have yet seen on any shipping laptop.

It works well with a wide viewing angle, is easy on the eyes, and gives excellent color. It is an LCD we would gladly replace almost any 17" CRT with. It also provides true 24-bit color, or at least something so close we could not tell the difference. Buyer beware: even if the specifications say a notebook supports 24-bit, you do not know that for a fact until you see it with your own eyes. Like we said, this Dell notebook does support 24-bit, and quite well too.

And that support is very important in DVD playback. Without accessing the full 24-bit palette, DVD playback can look ugly. The hardware IDCT acceleration of the ATI video also helps in DVD playback by offloading some serious math from the CPU.

One added bonus of the 15" SXGA+ LCD is that you can dim the backlight far more than most screens can. This lets you run much longer on a battery with much lower power usage. The large Inspiron 5000e actually outlasted our Inspiron 4000 and Gateway Solo on battery life, even though the 5000e has a much larger screen than both of the other models.

We recommend you at least purchase the SXGA+ LCD if you buy an Inspiron 5000e. The LCD alone is worth the price. However, for $250 more, you can get the UXGA screen. At 1600x1200 over 15", the UXGA screen provides 133dpi! It has to be seen to be believed. LCD technology has surpassed CRT technology in most areas, plain and simple.

The Details

The true defining differences between notebooks come in the details. The Inspiron 5000e has mixed success in this area. First, the bad: It has a boxy, sharp look and feel to it. Whilst the laptop is not an attraction, it certainly isn't a distraction either. Very corporate and about as far removed from an iMAC and its fruity flavors as can be. It won't look out of place in any boardroom meeting and with its excellent screen the attendees at the meeting will likely be focusing on any presentation that you may intent to give rather than focusing in on the look of the laptop itself.

When sitting down, your hands may rest uncomfortably on the sharp corner of the front of the case. There is a bit of ribbon cable visible in LCD hinge. The front-loading CD drive stops you from loading discs when the machine is in your lap. There is no internal Ethernet available, so you have to buy a PC Card or USB adapter. Then there is the largest flaw of all, which we already mentioned, the release switches for the battery and drive bayys are on the bottom of the case, making it difficult to remove the drives without turning the machine on its side or top.

Now the good: The touch pad is excellent, and includes great support software. The keyboard feels good, though the keys could be lighter. There is a full-size inverted T for the arrow keys in the lower right, which are very useful and, we think are a must on all notebooks. All the normal keys are in their proper positions and the spacing is excellent. The only odd part of the layout is that the page up, page down and other extended keys are located in a row above the F-keys on the right hand of the keyboard. Since these keys are not used constantly, we think this was a good sacrifice to make in order to keep the often-used keys in their proper positions.

The Audio

The audio from the Dell Inspiron 5000e is good, and better than the smaller 4000, but not great. Watching a DVD with the external speakers is more than doable but more importantly, you can give a presentation in a small room with the 5000e's stock speakers, but for a medium to large crowd, you need external speakers.

System As Tested

Dell Inspiron 4000 Processor: Pentium III-750 Memory: 128 MB SDRAM Video Card: ATI Rage Mobility AGP-2X 8MB Hard-Drive: 20 GB 4200RPM IBM DJSA-220 Sound: ESS Maestro PCI CD/DVD: DVD-ROM Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional

Dell Inspiron 5000E Processor: Pentium III-800 Memory: 128 MB SDRAM Video Card: ATI Rage Mobility AGP-2X 16MB Hard-Drive: 30 GB 4200 RPM IBM DJSA-230 Sound: ESS Maestro PCI CD/DVD: DVD-ROM Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional

On to the benchmarks...

Benchmarks

Content Creation 2000

ZDNet's Content Creation 2000 is used to provide some assistance in getting your notebook acquisition approved. It measures the performance from a selection of office applications such as, Adobe PhotoShop 5.0, Adobe Premiere 5.1., Macromedia Director 7.0 and Macromedia Dreamweaver 2.0., Netscape Navigator 4.6, Sonic Foundry Sound Forge.

The 5000e squeaked by the 4000 in CC2000, but a score of 22.9 due to its 50MHz faster processor. The performance is still far behind what a desktop system with a slower processor could score simply because hard drive speed plays a huge roll in CC2000's score. The average desktop of today has a 5400rpm drive, and many come with a 7200rpm drive.

Winstone 99: Business Test

Winstone 99 provides a similar look at performance with the likes of Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, Lotus SmartSuite, and Microsoft Office 97 being put to the test.

The 5000e once again barely passes the 4000, likely due to its extra 50MHz. These numbers here are in line with desktop performance from a Pentium III-800 Coppermine test system.

3DMark2000 CPU Test

3D Mark 2000 tests the whole 3D pipeline, including transform, lighting and rasterization. Mad Onion calls it a CPU test, though the choice of video card and driver has a much larger impact on the score.

The 5000e skips past the 4000 in 3D Mark 2000's processor test, partially due to its extra 50MHz, but mostly because of its extra 8MB of SGRAM. A desktop system with GeForce2 class video can score 400 to 600 on the test without much sweat.

SiSoft Sandra 2000

SiSoft's Sandra quantifies system memory bandwidth by tallying the calculations with data and instructions over the system bus. Dhrystone measures the millions of operations per second (MIPS) that a system can process while Whetstone measures the millions of floating-point operations per second (MFLOPS) that a system can process. Floating-point calculations include any operation that involves fractional numbers, which can occur frequently in some programs.

So-we show you raw data, but what does it mean? What value can you pull away from this? Think of memory bandwidth as your free taxi-ride home at the end of the night. The scores here are in line if not better than a desktop system running an Asus P3B-F with a Pentium III-800. Remember, we are running all of this on a BX chipset core with all of the limitations thereof. Once again, the 5000e manages to move a little bit in front of the 4000.

SYSmark 2000

SYSmark2000 takes a comprehensive approach, combining Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity benchmarking into a single suite. Unfortunately, SYSmark does eventually crash if you run it enough times, but this is just a sign that it is time to get some sleep. Individual applications include: Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Adobe Premier 5.1, Elastic Reality 3.1, MetaCreations Bryce 4, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 4.0, Corel Paradox 9.0, Corel CorelDRAW 9.0, Microsoft Excel 2000, Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred 4.0, Netscape Communicator 4.61, Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, and Microsoft Word 2000.

The SYSmark 2000 score is a bit out of place, showing the 5000e falling noticeably behind the 4000. Still, overall performance on the 5000e is excellent.

Battery Life

BatteryMark

BatteryMark's life test uses WinBench graphics, disk, and processor test engines, mixed with think time intervals. (Think time simulates the pauses a user would take while working with an application, perfect for simulating those late night snack pauses as well). Here's what the engines do:

Graphics: Runs WinBench 97's graphics engine to replay the graphics subsystem operations we recorded during Winstone 97's running of the following leading business applications: Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.

Disk: Runs WinBench 97's Business Disk WinMarkTM 97 test, which replays the disk subsystem operations we recorded during Winsstone 97's Business Winstone 97 test.

Processor: Runs WinBench 97's CPUmarkTM32 processor test, a large instruction mix that executes 32-bit operations and carefully emulates the processor activity of real-world applications.

Overall battery life is extremely strong. At 3:59 in ZD's BatteryMark, the Inspiron 5000e does better than many smaller, lower powered laptops. The SpeedStep technology does seem to help battery life. However, since most of the power is actually drawn from the LCD, no matter how power-sipping your CPU is, you cannot see amazingly extended life from low-CPU usage. The impressive thing about the 5000e is that the backlight can dim far lower than most other LCD screens we have seen. This allows you to get much more use out of the machine on a single battery.

Customizability

Dell sells their Inspiron notebooks over the web, which allows purchasers to specify what options they want. You can choose your processor, RAM, hard drive, CD/DVD, LCD, OS, and more. Of course, the more bells and whistles you choose, the more the machine will cost. You can get a cut-down Inspiron 5000e with a 14" LCD and a 600MHz Celeron for as little at $1600, though we do not recommend you buy a cut-down one since their larger LCD screens are worth twice the price.

Size and Weight

The Inspiron 5000e weighs in at a moderate ~7.5lbs with both the DVD and battery installed. It is fine for taking with you on a commute, but will cause you some major discomfort if you carry it for more than just short trips. The 5000e packs a full-feature set into a medium size package. If you want a smaller laptop, the Inspiron 4000 is a great choice. If you want a truly light computer, we recommend the Palm Pilot or similar.

Value

For about $3400 as tested, the Dell Inspiron 5000e provides excellent performance in both 2D and 3D along with a fantastic display. There are lower-priced notebooks from lower-end brands that pack similar performance and features but none we have seen with such a good display. If you want lower weight, Dell's Inspiron 4000 provides a similar feature set in a tidier package for slightly less money, but you do not get as good an LCD. For a lot less money, you can go with brands like WinBook and get nearly the same performance and features, but again, you get a worse LCD. Basically, the LCD makes the Inspiron 5000e very desirable.

Overall

Overall, we were happy with the Inspiron 5000e as a whole and particularly pleased with its LCD. Its speed does not approach that of a full desktop system, but it still performs quite well in business applications and reasonably well in 3D, especially for a notebook. It has highly impressive battery life, a full feature-set, plenty of versatility, and solid build quality. The Inspiron 5000e could easily replace a desktop system.

Originally published on www.SharkyExtreme.com