Dell Inspiron 4100 Review

Not Too Big, Not Too Small, and Definitely Not Too Slow

The Dell Inspiron 4100 is a notebook that'll make you think four times. It's powerful enough -- with Intel's fastest (1.2GHz) mobile Pentium III processor and ATI Mobility Radeon graphics chip -- to make you think twice about getting a desktop PC. And it's light enough to make you think twice about getting a heavier "desktop replacement" portable like Dell's Inspiron 8100 or Gateway's Solo 9550.

Laptops like the latter are so-called three-spindle designs, with room for three internal drives (usually floppy, hard, and optical). The Inspiron 4100, like the model 4000 it replaces, is a two-spindle system, with an internal 20GB hard disk and a swappable modular bay that can hold a 1.44MB floppy drive, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive, or a second battery pack. Windows 2000 Professional makes stopping and removing the floppy and inserting the optical drive (or vice versa) a quick, no-reboot maneuver, but the capacity of the CD-RW makes it unlikely you'll use the floppy much. (If you insist, a $10 external floppy cable lets you use both drives simultaneously.)

The 4100 also has a 14.1-inch active-matrix screen instead of a flagship laptop's 15-inch panel -- which lets the 10 by 12.5 by 1.4-inch system slip into the notebook compartment of our briefcase, where 15-inch models won't fit, and makes it much easier to carry at 6.25 pounds with the combo drive. (It's 6.0 pounds with the floppy or 5.6 pounds with neither, using an empty plastic travel bay that's a $5 option; the averagely bulky AC adapter adds one pound to your briefcase weight.)

But settling for a 14.1-inch LCD doesn't mean you must settle for the usual 1,024 by 768-pixel (XGA) resolution. Our test model had a 1,400 by 1,050 (SXGA+) display, which gave noticeably more workspace without making menus and icons too tiny to read comfortably. As a third choice, eagle-eyed spreadsheet or image editors can order a model with 1,600 by 1,200 (UXGA) resolution, but we suspect that really would make us wish for 15 instead of 14.1 inches -- we vote for the middle option, especially since it costs only $80 more than XGA and $150 less than UXGA.

Speaking of prices, our Inspiron 4100 rings up at $2,410 (checking the small business rather than home area of Dell's Web site in order to match its configuration with Win 2000 Pro instead of Win XP). That looks steep in this era of $1,999-and-less laptop bargains, but it's loaded with the 1.2GHz Pentium III-M, 256MB of SDRAM, the 20GB hard disk and DVD/CD-RW combo drive, Microsoft Office XP Small Business Edition, and a $159 internal (Mini PCI) 802.11b wireless network adapter as well as both 10/100Mbps wired Ethernet and 56Kbps modem ports. It also includes a three-year warranty with mail-in service; three years of on-site service plus Dell's CompleteCare, which offers repair or replacement even for accidents like drops or beverage spills, would cost $289 more.

Nor does the $2,410 tag reflect any of the $100-off, free-memory-upgrade, or other discount deals that come and go on Dell's site almost daily. Between them and configuration choices such as Windows XP Home Edition ($99 less), a 1.13GHz ($100 less) or 1.0GHz processor ($250 less), or plain CD-RW instead of combo drive ($70 less), you should find budget room to maneuver. Still, we wish Dell would trim off another $150 or so to match the Inspiron's trim size and weight. That would make it the first computer to get a five- instead of four-star rating in our time at Hardware Central.

Skip To Page • 1 Not Too Big, Not Too Small, and Definitely Not Too Slow 2 The Fastest Notebook We've Tested

Tools:

Add hardwarecentral.com to your favorites Add hardwarecentral.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.x