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As promised yesterday, I have decided to do one of those live bloggie things, where you blog as it happens. For this I shall review the Inspiron 1525, killing two chavs with one bottle as the saying goes.¹

I decided to call this a live entry due to the fact I’m using the laptop to write it. So during this time I shall review it on the ease of key use, as well as everything else.

To start off with I’ll give my systems specifications:

• Manufacturer: Dell (UK)
• Model: Inspiron 1525
• Op Systems: Vista Home Premium (SP1) + Kubuntu 8.04
• Display: 15.4″ Widescreen (1280 x 800) with TrueLife
• Hard Disk: 160GB SATA (5400 rpm)
• Memory: 2GB, 667MHz, Dual Channel DDR2
• Graphics: Integrated Intel Media Accelerator X3100
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5550, 1.83GHz, 2MB, L2 cache
• Optical Drive: 8xDVD +/- rw
• Wireless Card: Intel pro wireless a/b/g
• Ports: 4xUSB; 1xSD/MMC; 1xModem; 1xEthernet; 1xPS2; 1xCamera lead; 1xData lead; 1xExternal Monitor; 1xMic; 2xHeadphones, yea two.
• Additional: 2.0 mega pixel camera; custom chill design; 6-cell battery; built in wi-fi catcher; uk keypad; bundled crap ware.

Now to the good stuff. The machine itself is generally quiet, especially when sat idle. If the fan whirs you will hear it for a few moments, but it’s never constant. The hard disk goes through its clicking cycles when it’s working, but I find that to be relaxing and it isn’t really noticeable unless you listen for it.

The built in keyboard is within nice reach, nothing too stressful to use other than the delete button is in the top corner, it would be better situated near the bottom as I need it often. There is a slight space between several of the keys, for example: the menu key has space on both sides; and the home, page up, and page down keys have space to their left. This space looks out of place, and could of been used to spread the rest of the keys out a millimetre or two more. For general typing the keys are great, and don’t require any hard presses like a desktop keyboard.

The touch pad is where all the fun is had. After tweaking the settings to prevent the slightest breath of air clicking everything it’s a snap to use. Widening the scrollbar area makes things that much more easy to scroll through, and dragging files about is nice and easy. The buttons underneath don’t intrude with what you’re doing; sit at the same level as the cover; and require a slightly heaver press than the keypad keys, which prevents accidental pressings.

As I have the 6-cell battery and use power saving, the battery life is around four hours without intensity. If you started to watch videos; play games; listen to music the battery will drain quicker, I can’t really review battery life since my computer usage is different to yours. Plus the machine is plugged in cheating anyway.

Temperature wise, there is heat given from the bottom, and the area around the touch pad gets a tad warm to the touch. There isn’t really any ventilation on the bottom, so suffocating it on your bed will make the sheets warm. Across the top of the base, just below the screen are ventilation holes that, when looking aren’t all “open”. Having had the machine on for 29 hours there isn’t a noticeable difference in the temperature, It’s as warm now as it was yesterday and still sat on my bed.

The volume controls are touch strips, so no weird buttons sticking out where they shouldn’t be, and are very easy to use. The num lock; scroll lock; and caps lock strip is similar, except they are lights run via the keypad keys. All of these lights are blue when lit, with the volume control lights fading back out, which is brilliant. As a designer you can’t go wrong with blue.

Opening the optical drive, like all laptops is as simple as pressing the button on the “drawer”; waiting a few seconds for it to pop out; then pulling it further out. I have always found this feature annoying in laptops, I guess it’s just the fear of damage.

This laptop comes with two speakers, situated either side of the built-in web cam, and since I’m used to heavy bass lines from my mini sub, don’t give a poor performance but don’t give a great one neither. To have an idea what they sound like turn the bass down on your desktop speakers, either the sub like me; or within the sound settings, and you will have a high pitched sound. Now go higher and that’s somewhere near the laptops speakers. They could do with a bit of an umph, but they are quite adequate. I may plug the sub in and see what I get out.

The screen resolution of the machine is 1280×800, and is a 15.4″ wide-screen. It’s actually a nice wide-screen, and I prefer it to my desktop monitor at 1024×768 and 15″ square. I also have the TrueLife feature on this, which I didn’t want but couldn’t refuse, and it gets quite annoying when the sun shines all over it. That’s just the TrueLife though, the standard screen would be fine.

The built-in wi-fi catcher works a treat, just switch it across; give it a flick; and the machine scans for available networks. The wireless also works in Kubuntu without issues, whether that’s due to installation I don’t know but the Inspiron 6400 (my sisters and the one I planned to buy originally) didn’t run on the live disk.

I played with the camera briefly and for 2 mega pixels isn’t all bad. There is a small blue light which shines at you when the camera is on, whether this will become annoying I can’t say. It will however, give a visual representation that the camera is on so you don’t do something regrettable.

Using vista, the 2GB of memory is diminished to having just over 800MB left for Firefox. There isn’t any delays in the response times for programs, mostly due to the core 2 duo processor strolling through everything, and vista runs smoothly.

Overall this laptop is great, and I recommend it to all of you looking for something general for every day office type work or web browsing. For those of you gamer-nating, go for something designed for gaming or beef up the components.

I’m going to be lame and give a score: 9/10. Only 9 due to the delete button; the odd space between keys on the right side; the speaker quality; and well that’s it. Nothing else to complain about. It was a great purchase, and apart from the original order being stolen I’m happy I bought it.

If you have questions feel free to ask in the comments, Ill try and answer whatever you ask.

1: It doesn’t actually, it’s two birds with one stone but teh burdehs outrank teh chavz0rz!