Comments on: Dell Inspiron 11 11.6-Inch Obsidian Black Laptop

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:06:11 +0000

It's hard to find detailed info about this laptop, even from Dell's website. The specs certainly measure up to the competion at Amazon's fantastic price, and if you order it similarly equipped direct from Dell expect to pay about $150 more. Other reviews of the computer have been helpful, but compare carefully to other small notebooks on the market before you buy. (I returned this one.)

LIKES:
Overall fit and finish: excellent, although a fingerprint magnet
Price: best 1.3ghz dual core notebook bargain at the moment (expect to pay about $100 more for comparable performance)
Excellent screen, although only 11.6" compared to competition (see below)
Windows 7

DISLIKES:
A 3 cell battery would have kept the sleek, slim <1" profile, while the included 6 cell battery sticks out akwardly from the bottom of the case at the rear of the unit, doubling the thickness and making it difficult to slide the computer into a sleeve, computer bag, etc. (see photo.)
No HDD indicator light!
2 of 3 USB ports and the power port are on the right side of the case, right where I use my mouse!
Card reader only accepts 3 types of cards.
HDMI output only, no VGA.
4Gb of memory is great, but it's configured suboptimally in single channel configuration instead of dual channel (a very minor impact on performance.)
Weight of the notebook with included 6 cell battery is 3.40 lbs...still fairly light, but this is not clearly spelled out in the description.
A 12.1" screen could have easily been installed in the same space.
Touchpad buttons are difficult to activate with normal finger pressure.
No "upgrade" access panels anywhere on the unit; would require signficant disassembly.
Large and heavy power AC power adapter, 3 prong plug.

I ultimately returned this laptop due to the akward battery issue (the 3 cell version does not have this issue, but I need the 6 cell.) The depth of the computer at the battery is a full 2 inches, and it does not fit neatly in a travel bag in any way. I purchased an ASUS UL30A-X5 which is a great value as well but $170 more. It offers higher specs (13.3" LCD, full core2 duo, 500GB HDD, 4gb DDR3 memory) in a slightly larger footprint, but with it's smaller power supply weighs only 2oz more than the 11z. The ASUS UL20A is also a good model. Rating: 4 / 5

By: M. Smith

M. Smith — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:22:21 +0000

Probably the most power and performance that you can get in anything under 13", and for less than $500!!! Ultra low voltage processor for incedible speed and effeciency, will definitely get you more battery life. 4GB Ram and 250GB Hard drive is more than most other laptops priced at $899 or better and this is only $499.

the previous review says it only has 2GB of Ram, this is wrong. I also called Amazon and they confirmed it is 4GB, and that the site has been updated to reflect the correct information.

I was looking for a mini, but when I found this, i was blown away with the components i'm getting, and not sacrificing the size i wanted in the mini. Rating: 5 / 5

By: ronrmoose

ronrmoose — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:41:45 +0000

Powerful, feature rich, laptop small enough to fall into the netbook catagory. Streaming or stored video plays bautifully due to the dual core CPU, good video processor, and high definition screen. Keyboard is large enough to type on normally after some practice. Only faults are the lack of a VGA output, has only HDMI, and the awful fingerprint gathering glossy black finish. Price on Amazon is the lowest I’ve found for comparable laptop. As always the packing and shipping were excellent.
Rating: 4 / 5

By: NJ Traveler

NJ Traveler — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:59:08 +0000

Very nice computer but I want to share a couple of specifics that others have questioned.

1. This comes with a 6 cell battery so it sticks out on the bottom in back. Very good battery life- about 7 hours yesterday.

2. Windows 7 is the 64-bit version.

3. There is 4 GB Ram.

Much faster than my Dell mini 9 and only slightly larger. So far, I love it.
Rating: 4 / 5

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:52:14 +0000

I want to add one thing that is perhaps easy to overlook with this laptop: it has the best CPU in it’s class and price range. Most notebooks with an 11.6 inch screen have a Celeron CPU (such as the new Acer 1410 series). This means less cache and no “Intel Speedstep” which is an important power saving feature (mostly used when in battery mode). Celeron laptops will drain your battery quickly when you use any compute heavy task. The other common CPU is a single core “Core Solo”. The single core CPUs have the bad habit of slowing to a crawl whenever the anti-virus kicks in (because it can’t offload that task to the second core) and being generally slow if you run any internet security software(which any sane person would today but adds a lot of background CPU tasks that can run on a second core if you have one). You can step up to a full Core2 Duo, but that can add 20%-30% onto the cost (see the Acer Timeline series).

Dell did the right thing here when they used the 1.3GHz Intel Pentium SU4100 Processor. It has two cores, 2MB cache (twice the Celeron but 2/3 the more expensive Core2 Duo), and a 800MHz memory bus (vs. the Celeron’s 667Mhz). And it has the all important SpeedStep technology found in the more expensive Core2 Duo. The only major feature it lacks is Virtualization, which is mostly a server technology which no home application to speak of. It uses the same core as the more expensive Core2 Duo so aside from the smaller cache the basic performance is the same (though some Core2 Duos have faster memory bus). It’s the best fit price/performance wise but lately it’s been passed over for the cheaper Celeron but vendors who count on consumers not knowing any better.

Rating: 5 / 5