Dell's Inspiron 11z Netbook: Superior Performance, Lousy Touchpad

The Dell Inspiron 11z is an attempt to rectify the biggest drawback of current netbooks--low processing power--by using Intel's ultralow-voltage Celeron and Pentium CPUs. The 11z--which starts at $379--is available with either the single-core Celeron 743 or, as with our test unit, the dual-core Pentium SU4100. Both CPUs run at 1.3GHz with an 800MHz bus. Besides two cores, the Pentium SU4100 has 64-bit support. Oh, and it adds $75 to the price.

Choosing 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium--which our test system came with--will cost you $30 more over the default Vista Home Basic operating system. And if you want any color other than "Obsidian Black," that will run you $40 more. Boost the RAM from 2GB to 4GB and choose a larger hard drive, and you can easily turn this under- $400 netbook into a nearly $700 companion device to your main system. In addition to the dual-core CPU, our test system had the 250GB drive upgrade but not the 4GB RAM option, a mix making for a fairly pricey netbook.

The Inspiron 11z battery earned 63 on WorldBench 6, a tie for the best netbook score we've seen yet. Nevertheless, the unit's limited RAM, lack of an optical drive, and small size will make it simply a light travel buddy or "companion PC" for most users. It's not all about the CPU power, after all. The screen resolution is 1366 by 768 with LED backlighting, which is a step up from many netbooks this size. It really helps alleviate that "can't see the whole drop-down menu" problem that so many of these devices have. Color and contrast are pretty good, though the lighting is a little bit uneven--it's noticeably darker along the top edge.

You can opt to upgrade the a/b/g Wi-Fi adapter to 802.11n for a nominal fee, or add 3G and GPS for a not-so-nominal fee. Dropping the Atom processor has also given Intel the ability to move to a superior GS45 chipset, which means better GMA4500 graphics. It's still no barn-burner in the 3D department and I wouldn't recommend playing 3D games on this system, but the video decoding is an improvement over what you find on many netbooks and might make that HDMI output worth having.

The 11z's performance comes at a price, of course. Yes, Intel's new ultralow-voltage CPUs employ a very small amount of power compared with its general laptop and desktop processors, but battery life still suffers compared with good Atom-based netbooks. A really good netbook will last for perhaps 5 hours on a standard-size battery, and 8 hours or more with the extended battery. Our video playback test killed the extended six-cell battery in less than 6 hours, and you'd be lucky to get 3 hours of uptime using Wi-Fi with the regular Dell Inspiron 11z battery. The Inspiron 11z may be superior to the typical netbook in performance, but it's certainly inferior in its time away from the plug.

The netbook's design is simple, with nothing on the system's face but a power button, a keyboard, and a touchpad. You get three USB ports, HDMI, gigabit ethernet, headphone and microphone jacks, and a multicard reader. The large keyboard is easy to type on and has a nice springy feel with a fair amount of key travel. After a small period of adjustment, you'll probably be able to type quite comfortably on it. Not every netbook has a full-size backspace key, so it's nice to see one here. Overall, its design is not going to win any awards, but it's certainly not hard on the eyes.


So far, so good--right? It sounds like just the thing for customers who think Atom-based netbooks are a little underpowered for them. As long as you don't go overboard on extra features, making the system cost as much as a full-sized notebook, the batery for Dell Inspiron 11z sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Then you use it, and discover that the touchpad is practically worthless. It's mushy and unresponsive, with left and right "soft buttons" at the bottom that cause all sorts of problems; did you mean to move your hand down to the lower-right corner, or are you just resting your finger there to click the button? We experienced all sorts of false registers for the zoom and rotate gesture commands and eventually had to turn them off. Even with these disabled, we struggled to get the mouse pointer to go where we wanted it and to click when we wanted it to. You could always plug in a USB mouse, but that sort of defeats the "portability" angle that makes netbooks so enticing.

Sometimes, a product that receives an average score is an average product. Other times, it's a product with great strengths and terrible weaknesses, where the two average each other out. The Inspiron 11z is one of the latter. Dell's use of ULV processors and the GS45 platform offers superior performance to most netbooks, but dell battery life suffers, and the horrible touchpad makes for the kind of hair-pulling frustration most people buy a new PC to get away from.

DELL STUDIO 1735 Review

I had been talking about getting a laptop for quite some time. Having a laptop when you’re a fulltime blogger certainly has its perks. You aren’t confined to one area like you would be with a desktop, and if the system is right you could end up with something as good in a laptop. Currently, the majority of my blogging is done on my main system, which is a Dell XPS. So, when Dell began sporting the new Studio line of laptops, which are comparable in many of the specs to the XPS, with a cheaper price tag, I took notice.

When I took Dell Studio 1735 out of the box we experienced a déjà vu which was expected because the only differences in design from 1535 model are bigger dimensions and presence of numerical keypad. Surprisingly, besides bigger dimensions keyboard is noticeably firmer then on 1535 model. Area around Enter key and numeric pad bends under pressure but hardly noticeable and not in amount that would disturb anyone. Since keyboard was our main complaint on smaller model this change was right on target. Touch Pad is precise which can be said also for almost noiseless keys below it.

While funky lid colouring has already been seen in units such as the and the Studio 17's chassis is nearly identical to the , right down to the L-shaped hinge, the notebook's right palm-rest features a new contour-map design that represents the western side of a mountainous range. It's etched in light-grey on a grey background, so the image doesn't stand out enough to be annoying.

The reason why the contour map can cover an entire western face is the unit's size. Similar to the NEC in terms of price, weight and bulk, the Dell comes in at 3.7kg without the power supply and 4.2kg with it included. You will need a good amount of strength and a smart power management plan if you want to use this laptop on the go, a judgement cemented by our dell studio 1735 battery rundown test. The unit lasted just 1hr 23min.

But in terms of performance, the NEC outstrips the Studio 17 in almost every aspect; the former ships with a Blu-ray player rather than a DVD-RW drive and it also returned better benchmark scores.

This machine is no slouch when it comes to processing power. Powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 processor, which runs at 2.4GHz, our test machine came with 4096MB of DDR2 memory. As a result, it offers a quick and nimble performance. With a MobileMark 2007 score of 223 supporting our own findings that this is a quick machine in all occasions, we feel it will comfortably replace your desktop PC with ease.

By outfitting the 1735 with 4GB of RAM (and an Intel Core 2 Duo 64bit CPU), Dell is advising users to use a 64bit OS in order to take advantage of the entire memory. Although not a must-have for the home user class, especially since this is marked as a desktop replacement, the device uses a fingerprint reader for improved security (don't want those kids to stumble upon those kinky movies downloaded of the Internet).

The new stylish color coated lids are awesome, but to get a little you have to give a little, so there will be some extra maintainance wiping off fingerprints and scuffs. While many reviewers did not like the new keyboard style, I could appreciate the roominess and light bounce of the keys when typing. A nice oooh aaah feature, was the sensitive media buttons. They are still above the keyboard, the new buttons are flat and sensitive to touch. They illuminate when touched, and respond quickly to raise, or lower the volume, launch the media player, or eject a disc from the slot loaded optical drive.

The price tag for this notebook (1270€) may look too high, but don’t forget about display that supports resolution up to 1920x1200 and its exceptional quality. Also with this model you get Radeon HD 3650 that can be used for playing most of new games but not on highest settings. This graphics card can “maybe” be overclocked but that is something that we don’t encourage you to do. Bear in mind that there are different configurations battery for Dell Studio 17 available with same quality build, so if you don’t care that much about good display you can change it and get lower price for notebook with similar characteristics.

The Studio 1735 specs are pretty well identical to the Inspiron 1720 with plans to re-tool the systems for montevina later on. Cosmetically the Studio 1735 shares no parts with the Inspiron 1720. The 1735 is a wedge design like the M1330 and M1530 laptops. Best graphics you can get in the 1735 is the 8600M GT.

Underneath the delicately crafted lid is a 17″ TrueLife Widescreen Display which delivers a crystal clear display for watching videos or using multimedia and graphics. The Studio 1735 battery is powered by an Intel Dual Core Processor T3200 running at 1.7 GHz and plenty of memory supply via 2GB Ram so you can do multi task and run many applications simultaneously. It also features WIFI, and wireless networking features to keep you connected on the go.

The Dell Studio 1735 is a fine machine that feels relaxed to use. The build quality is great and is matched by an equally striking performance. We're not certain who this new range is perfectly aimed at, although - in the end, it gives the look of an XPS but not the budget pricing of an Inspiron. Though, it proved an extremely effective desktop substitute.