Dell Inspiron 2500 Review

Pros, Cons, and Conclusions

Our only DVD complaint was that the Dell's volume-control buttons didn't work with the InterVideo player, though they turned up and down the volume of audio CDs just fine. A utility in the Windows taskbar tray toggles four buttons above the keyboard between multimedia (pause/play, next and previous track) and Internet (shortcut access to Dell support and e-mail) functions.

Compared to the fairly mushy feel of most laptops, the 2500's keyboard has a bit more click to it; after a few minutes to adjust to the smallish Insert, Delete, Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys stashed in the upper right corner, we found it well above average for high-speed typing. Similar kudos go to the Dell's touchpad, which lets you tap either the pad or two good-sized mouse buttons mounted below it and offers plenty of fine-tuning and customizing options via its software driver.

Of the Inspiron's three CPU choices, we'd pick the middle option, the 700MHz Pentium III in our test system; even with Intel's SpeedStep throttling it down to something like 550MHz while on battery power, it gave snappy performance and swift application loading.

And even though it weighs more than the four-cell pack, we'd definitely opt for the eight-cell, 59WHr lithium-ion battery -- in a mix of low-octane word processing and battery-hungry DVD and audio CD playback, we repeatedly saw an honest three hours between charges.

Adding everything up, our verdict on Dell's Inspiron 2500 reads like this:

Pros:

• Prices for 15-inch-screen models start under $1,500
• Cool keyboard, display, and DVD performance
• Good battery life

Cons:

• Price climbs fast as you add options
• Big 'n' heavy
• Penny-pinching graphics chipset and fixed, not modular, hard and optical drives

In other words, the 2500 illustrates both the happy availability of really good, affordable laptops nowadays and how all-too-easy it is to configure one right out of your price range. If we could swallow our big-screen pride, we'd save $250 by choosing a unit with a 14.1-inch display, and have a great (if slightly overweight) portable productivity workhorse.

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