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Dell Inspiron 6000
====This is a third party review and the opinions mentioned in it are not necessarily representative of the owners of this site. ===
The Inspiron 6000 comes as a major disappointment in the Dell
notebooks with no appealing features and a lack of decent software. Even the
design of the 6.6 lb machine is a black mark on the Dells generally superb
notebooks. It is almost mandatory to shell out extra hundreds of dollars to
install the basic software that should be offered with the notebook.
When
I took it out for a spin around a few Starbucks, testing out its numerous
capabilities I got quite a few admiring glances and I do not think it was the
computer. The 6000 comes with a great gray metallic finish which complements its
sharp build, but its snazzy looks are almost vintage, old news in the notebook
world. Dell has looked to Apple for inspiration in design, but instead came off
with a cheap knock-off look rather than a product that looks like a high
performance machine. Even beyond the failed design, the 6000 leaves a lot
wanting.
Manufacturer's site | Other reviews of this product
The 6000 is a mid-range
laptop, starting at $1200, and seems to be designed for heavy-duty
multimedia use but it lacks most of the software to complete these
tasks. It does not even include the Windows Media Center edition
software. Along with the lack of software is the poor performance
when running games or watching transferred video. Running old
games such as Star Trek: Armada caused the 1.6 Ghz Celeron M
Processor lots of problems and the 256 MB RAM made the graphics
slow to a crawl.
The 6000 has the feel and price of a notebook that excels in
multimedia. The notebook is even advertised as such, yet its
actual capabilities are poor even in comparison to the low end
notebooks. The lack of a TV tuner or even a proper media center
was an enormous omission among other things that I thought were
missing from the 6000. Even the productivity package came thin
with simply a Corel WordPerfect.
The plain Dell 6000 is almost a heap of useless metal, especially
with the release of the 6000d which has an enormously improved
graphics but the rest of the qualities are similar. Even while
there are gaping faults with the 6000d as well, it is a great
improvement over the baseline 6000. The difference between the two
is the Sonoma, a new Centrino package offered by Intel. The 6000
line had already been manufactured and so the same notebook began
to be sold under a different name, the 6000d. Sonoma was designed
specifically for multimedia and entertainment on the go. The
upgraded Celeron M and Pentium M helped the computer access the
memory faster and was able to handle taxing programs on the CPU
with a lot more ease. The 6000 also only came with a 256MB of
memory while the 6000d uses a chipset which leaves room for the
ATI Mobility Radeon X600. The 6000d also came with great wireless
cards with a choice between the 802.11b and 802.11g. They were
extremely effective and might be one of the few strong points of
the computer.
My biggest problem with the 6000 was that its performance was
nearly negligible with the previous notebooks in the same line
such as the Dell 600d. All Dell Inspirons come with the basic
media experience software and this notebook did not expand past
any of the basic features that Dell chooses to offer. I am not
really sure where the $1200 price tag comes from, but there are
not nearly enough options available for that high of a price. When
I tried to use Tivo-to-go technology on the notebook and stream it
through my notebook I saw the same poor quality that was present
in other Dell notebooks. Nothing made this notebook stand out
beyond its awkward old age design.
The Inspiron 6000 also had trouble with the basic function of peer
to peer networking which should have been standard procedures with
these Dell notebooks but after several hours of futile attempts
and numerous calls to technical support I still was not able to
connect and talk to other computers. The 6000d felt as if it was
better designed as the graphics improvement alone seemed to make
the entire notebook competent. The wireless connection was good,
the entertainment and media looked great, a large improvement over
the 6000s problems with simple games such as Star Trek. Similar
to the 6000, the 6000d had a large and powerful 15.4 screen that
it boasted and the energy saving feature on the computer when it
runs solely on battery can be turned off to brighten the screen
for a crisp clear picture. There was a good 60 GB of space in the
hard drive which is ample space for most users, even those who
want major entertainment programs on their computer. The CD\RW and
DVD\RW in a combo drive was a nice feature of the notebook and it
seemed compatible with most formats of other players.
If buyers are scouting the Dell 6000 lineup then they should go up
a level and buy the higher performing 6000d. The 6000 needs a few
hundred dollars for the extra software to make the notebook usable
up to its potential. Otherwise the Inspiron 6000 is a waste of
money, trading up is almost mandatory. The 6000d is a fairly
decent machine and is good for occasional entertainment use, but
those who will use their laptops primarily for entertainment
should step up to the Dell XPS notebooks. These notebooks are the
top of the line in media and entertain, especially designed for
gamers and to satisfy the needs of the tech savvy computer lovers.
The Inspiron 6000 is one I would pass on. If you are going to
purchase in the 6000 line then purchase the 6000d, which is
significantly better. RATING: 3 out of 10.
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