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Inspiron 6000 Results
I have promised everyone here that I would post my results of my Inspiron 6000 once I received it, so here goes my post. My system is configured per the following specifications:
Pentium-M 730 1.6Ghz Dothan (533Mhz FSB)
512MB DDR2 200-pin RAM (1 dimm)
ATi Radeon X300
60GB HD
15" WUSXGA+ LCD Panel (1920x1200)
Intel 2915ABG Wireless chipset (802.11a/b/g)
Sony Dual-Layer DVD+-RW 8x
My first impression of the laptop was quite positive. I took it out of the box, first the brand new case, then the box with cd's/manual and then finally the beautiful unit itself. I powered it on right away only to find that it had been fully charged by Dell before they sent it to me! I was quite happy due to that, and I actually forgot to unpack the ac adaptor for a while. My battery seemed to die rather quickly as I removed unnecessary pre-installed software and customized my new precious laptop to my liking (note: screen brightness was highest). At first sight, the screen was *breathtaking*. I had never seen a laptop screen at this high resolution, and finally seeing it first-hand was absolutely amazing. I quickly went to find several websites that had 1920x1200 wallpapers for me to use (I love the cool 3D ones :-) and had no trouble locating plenty of them. I checked the wireless connectivity with our access point at work and it was great. A while later on, I noticed that I wasn't picking up access points as well as I'd liked, so I found the solution to be disabling 802.11a in the driver via Device Manager. Once I did that, I got great reception from all access points as I had hoped to. The next thing I did was to pop in a DVD and check out the quality of the screen once again. As I expected, the quality of the screen was quite good and I would definitely continue to watch DVD's on this on a regular basis. The *big* issue I have with the DVD drive is that if you carry the laptop with a spinning disc in it and tip it at *all* quickly, it will most definitely give your disc a *very* nice scratch-up. I would highly recommend leaving the unit stationary while using CD/DVD's, or taking great care not to move it quickly while holding it. The unit (DVD drive) is a Sony according to the driver and I would highly recommend getting Dell to correct this if possible. I haven't called them on it yet. The one other glitch with the drive is that you have to make *double*-sure that you get the disc on the drive as they tend to pop off easily :\
Benchmarks
==========
I have recently just benchmarked the laptop versus my desktop machine (Athlon XP 1900+, 768MB RAM, GeForceFX 5800 Ultra) using Futuremark's 3DMark05 and PCMark04. The results are *very* interesting as I almost expected my desktop to outperform it in almost all instances due to the graphics chip I purchased for it a couple years ago. Here are some hard numbers from the benchmarks I ran:
Laptop:
3DMark05
3DMarks: 992 3DMarks
CPU Score: 3058 CPU Marks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 4.6 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 2.6 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 5.1 FPS
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing: 1181.4 MTexels/s
Pixel Shader: 23.4 FPS
PCMark04
PCMarks: 3289 PCMarks
File Decryption: 47.5 MB/s
File Encryption: 23.7 MB/s
Audio Conversion: 2194.0 KB/s
Physics Calculation and 3D: 155.4 FPS
Random Access - 8 MB: 2011.5 MB/s
Desktop:
3DMark05
3DMarks: 1008 3DMarks
CPU Score: 2306 CPU Marks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 3.5 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 3.3 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 5.6 FPS
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing: 3782.8 MTexels/s
Pixel Shader: 19.3 FPS
PCMark04
PCMarks: 2676 PCMarks
File Decryption: 48.5 MB/s
File Encryption: 24.0 MB/s
Audio Conversion: 1830.9 KB/s
Physics Calculation and 3D: 107.1 FPS
Random Access - 8 MB: 837.6 MB/s
Anyway I'm tired and gotta get to bed, lol I hope this helps some people out. Feel free to ask for info on how I ran benchmarks and anything about the laptop. I love it. Satisfied customer = "true"
-Trevor
Pentium-M 730 1.6Ghz Dothan (533Mhz FSB)
512MB DDR2 200-pin RAM (1 dimm)
ATi Radeon X300
60GB HD
15" WUSXGA+ LCD Panel (1920x1200)
Intel 2915ABG Wireless chipset (802.11a/b/g)
Sony Dual-Layer DVD+-RW 8x
My first impression of the laptop was quite positive. I took it out of the box, first the brand new case, then the box with cd's/manual and then finally the beautiful unit itself. I powered it on right away only to find that it had been fully charged by Dell before they sent it to me! I was quite happy due to that, and I actually forgot to unpack the ac adaptor for a while. My battery seemed to die rather quickly as I removed unnecessary pre-installed software and customized my new precious laptop to my liking (note: screen brightness was highest). At first sight, the screen was *breathtaking*. I had never seen a laptop screen at this high resolution, and finally seeing it first-hand was absolutely amazing. I quickly went to find several websites that had 1920x1200 wallpapers for me to use (I love the cool 3D ones :-) and had no trouble locating plenty of them. I checked the wireless connectivity with our access point at work and it was great. A while later on, I noticed that I wasn't picking up access points as well as I'd liked, so I found the solution to be disabling 802.11a in the driver via Device Manager. Once I did that, I got great reception from all access points as I had hoped to. The next thing I did was to pop in a DVD and check out the quality of the screen once again. As I expected, the quality of the screen was quite good and I would definitely continue to watch DVD's on this on a regular basis. The *big* issue I have with the DVD drive is that if you carry the laptop with a spinning disc in it and tip it at *all* quickly, it will most definitely give your disc a *very* nice scratch-up. I would highly recommend leaving the unit stationary while using CD/DVD's, or taking great care not to move it quickly while holding it. The unit (DVD drive) is a Sony according to the driver and I would highly recommend getting Dell to correct this if possible. I haven't called them on it yet. The one other glitch with the drive is that you have to make *double*-sure that you get the disc on the drive as they tend to pop off easily :\
Benchmarks
==========
I have recently just benchmarked the laptop versus my desktop machine (Athlon XP 1900+, 768MB RAM, GeForceFX 5800 Ultra) using Futuremark's 3DMark05 and PCMark04. The results are *very* interesting as I almost expected my desktop to outperform it in almost all instances due to the graphics chip I purchased for it a couple years ago. Here are some hard numbers from the benchmarks I ran:
Laptop:
3DMark05
3DMarks: 992 3DMarks
CPU Score: 3058 CPU Marks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 4.6 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 2.6 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 5.1 FPS
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing: 1181.4 MTexels/s
Pixel Shader: 23.4 FPS
PCMark04
PCMarks: 3289 PCMarks
File Decryption: 47.5 MB/s
File Encryption: 23.7 MB/s
Audio Conversion: 2194.0 KB/s
Physics Calculation and 3D: 155.4 FPS
Random Access - 8 MB: 2011.5 MB/s
Desktop:
3DMark05
3DMarks: 1008 3DMarks
CPU Score: 2306 CPU Marks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 3.5 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 3.3 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 5.6 FPS
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing: 3782.8 MTexels/s
Pixel Shader: 19.3 FPS
PCMark04
PCMarks: 2676 PCMarks
File Decryption: 48.5 MB/s
File Encryption: 24.0 MB/s
Audio Conversion: 1830.9 KB/s
Physics Calculation and 3D: 107.1 FPS
Random Access - 8 MB: 837.6 MB/s
Anyway I'm tired and gotta get to bed, lol I hope this helps some people out. Feel free to ask for info on how I ran benchmarks and anything about the laptop. I love it. Satisfied customer = "true"
-Trevor
Message Edited by bsdaemon on 04-27-2005 11:41 PM
- Wow, well knowing that makes me think a lot less of Dell...first of all scratching my CD's (unacceptable) and providing me with a poor quality drive. If it dies though, it will certainly be replaced under warranty so I'm not terribly worried. Thanks for the info though. Sorry the review sukked, I'm not a writer and it was getting really late. Hopefully someone googling for Inspiron 6000 review will find it though and hopefully it will help them! Thanks again
- That's not Dell's fault. Nobody can make any such skip-proof drive. :smileyhappy: It is just about physically impossible.The computer I mentioned with the BTC drive was NOT a Dell. It was one my dad had put parts in by himself. The problem was that it blew TWO cd drives while in our family's care, the first of which was the BTC drive.
Message Edited by NAB622 on 04-28-2005 09:47 AM
Just a little side note:
Dell cannot fix the problem with the DVD getting scratched as you tip the computer. The laser is too close to the disc to stop it from touching. It would be a big energy hog and waste of resources to create such a thing. Believe me, I wish there was a such thing, too.
- Ok, let me tell you this much. I don't know a lot about optical drives, but I do know that the laser is only a few millimeters away from the CD during reading. This is why I think the laser gets scratched. It might be the side of the drive at the edge of the disc. I don't know. I'm just saying what my experience tells me. As for the latitude drive, maybe it has some padding or a makeshift 'suspension' to prevent it from scratching thte cds, because it's a business grade computer. That may be the difference.
NAB622
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229 Posts
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Posted April 28th, 2005 13:00
It probably is. I had to put up with a stupid BTC cd rom drive for the longest time. It would INTENTIONALLY scratch cds and then complain that it couldn't read them (IN A DESKTOP!!) It would just spin them faster and faster until I though the computer would blow up. Then I would tell it to eject, so it would drop the cd (Still spinning a million RPM, mind you) and then eject it with a LOUD noise!
I would advise you NOT to buy a BTC computer accesory. (No, BTC and Dell are not related. I hope BTC is out of buisiness by now! They also sold us a defective keyboard!)
Message Edited by NAB622 on 04-28-2005 09:48 AM