I purchased the Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop back in January for my daughter's birthday. I had a limited budget but wanted to get her something with decent enough spec for playing computer games should she wish to do this, and a large hard drive as she is a big fan of making videos on her digital ... Read review
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Brand-new | 19.5v/4.62a, 7.4x5.0 w/pin tip PRODUCED EXCLUSIVELY FOR SMART PARTS UK. 1 YEAR ... more
WARRANTY (WARRANTY IS ONLY ELIGIBLE FOR PRODUCTS SOLD BY SMART PARTS UK). We ship to all UK postcodes and to most EU countries. Maximum handling time is 24 hours.
Postage & Packaging:Check Site. Availability:Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Advantages: Good spec, reasonable price, great processor Disadvantages: The piano black surface attracts dust and dirt.
I purchased the Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop back in January for my daughter's birthday. I had a limited budget but wanted to get her something with decent enough spec for playing computer games should she wish to do this, and a large hard drive as she is a big fan of making videos on her digital camera and downloading music - two things which can eat up hard drive space.
I did a fair bit of research before purchasing and decided I wanted ... ...budget.
The Dell I purchased has a dark blue coloured lid, however the rest of it is a shiny piano black which looks lovely. I would have preferred metal for the mousepad area - it feels sturdier and doesn't seem to attract the dust the way the piano black plastic does - however that's a small quibble. The screen is widescreen and measures 15.6 inches and overall it's pretty lightweight and easy to carry about if you wish to do so. more
I purchased the Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop back in January for my daughter's birthday. I had a limited budget but wanted to get her something with decent enough spec for playing computer games should she wish to do this, and a large hard drive as she is a big fan of making videos on her digital camera and downloading music - two things which can eat up hard drive space.
I did a fair bit of research before purchasing and decided I wanted to get the best spec I possibly could for my money and the Inspiron ticked all the boxes. I paid £399 in January 2009 in Currys for the laptop which was the absolute limit on my budget.
The Dell I purchased has a dark blue coloured lid, however the rest of it is a shiny piano black which looks lovely. I would have preferred metal for the mousepad area - it feels sturdier and doesn't seem to attract the dust the way the piano black plastic does - however that's a small quibble. The screen is widescreen and measures 15.6 inches and overall it's pretty lightweight and easy to carry about if you wish to do so.
So - what came in the box?
As well as the laptop there was an instruction manual, mains lead, Dell restoration CD-ROMs and a CD-ROM for Works 9.
The laptop had Windows Vista Premium pre-installed - and I worried that this might be a challenge for me as it was my introduction to Vista - however setting the machine up was a piece of cake.
I merely switched it on and dealt with a few prompts as Vista set up and then the computer was up and running. It has wifi installed and this picked up my wireless connection without any problems - and once I entered the security details for my network we were home and dry and online in no time!
When I was researching laptops I learned that you really need a minimum of 2GB RAM to run Vista properly, so this was another factor to consider when deciding the spec I needed for her laptop.
The laptop had a trial version of MacAfee installed but I decided to ignore this and installed AVG instead as my daughter is more familiar with it. I also decided to install the Works program that came with the laptop rather than Office as she really only needs a word processing program at the moment. I was concerned she may find it hard to use at first but we had no such worries.
What I really noticed about this little beauty was the speed - it loads really quickly and smoothly. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.00 Ghz and there is 3GB RAM. This combination makes the Inspiron easily the fastest computer in the house - making me green with envy!
So onto the litmus test - did my daughter like it? Well yes - she loved it! She was really pleased to have this compact little laptop in her bedroom instead of the old desktop computer she had had in the past. She loved how she didn't need a wireless adaptor, the speed, and everything about it! The laptop has a large hard drive of 250 GB but this is half full already - just over 3 months since she got it, so I can foresee me having to get an external hard drive for her in the future.
I had worried about her learning how to use Vista, but like all 12 year olds, she picked it up far quicker than I did, so my fears were unfounded.
There are three USB ports, which so far I have found sufficient. The laptop does have speakers but they are a bit on the tinny side and given my daughter listens to a lot of music on her computer, I got her some USB powered speakers which offer fantastic sound quality.
The laptop also has an integral SD card reader which is invaluable for my daughter as she can easily upload photos and videos from her camera and also copy music onto the SD card she uses in her new Nintendo DSi.
There is a CD/DVD RW drive which works a treat - my daughter thoroughly enjoys making music CDs up using it and has also burned the occasional DVD featuring some of her many video clips. She can also watch DVDs on the laptop but hasn't used the laptop this way - she prefers to watch her DVDs on TV. It also came with Windows Media Center already installed which was an extra bonus as my daughter was already familiar with this from her old desktop computer and was delighted to still be able to use it for her videos, photos and music.
The Inspiron I purchased does not have a built-in webcam but this feature is available on some models.
The one thing we haven't tested is the battery life - Dell claim it's 2 hours however. As my daughter hasn't removed it from her bedroom since she got it I cannot tell you for sure. As she just recently broke the screen on my Samsung laptop, resulting in a large repair bill, she is probably too scared to move this one!
I am really pleased with the Dell Inspiron 1545 and think it's a really good buy for children or students as it's easy to use, fast to load and has a large hard drive but is available at a good price for the spec offered.
I do advise getting some half decent speakers to use with it however and cleaning it regularly - the piano black doesn't half attract the dust and show up fingerprints.
Overall this is a good machine for the money and it can be found in various outlets right now, including Currys, Tesco and Dell online.
**Previously published on dooyoo by me under the same user name.**
Advantages: Great Performance, Attractive cover, brilliant screen quality Disadvantages: Smudges around keyboard, poor battery life
I bought this laptop from PC World in August and I am now at university. Since coming to university, I have used the laptop everyday for a wide range of tasks - and yes, I believe it has performed very well each time. Performance Both Startup, and shutdown are very speedy, ideal when you are in a hurry - as many students are! Once the logged in, the desktop appears rather quickly even though I have large programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver installed. ... ...would slow my laptop down too much since this is a large program, known for slowing down computers. But when I installed it, it bearly seemed to affect the laptop at all - even though I have it running constantly in the background! Casing The casing (or shell) looked very nice and shiny when I first bought it. The problem is that it seems to show up all the nasty fingerprints and smudges around the keyboard and mousepad. This is definately a negetive ...
pmorris9191 09.10.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop
Advantages: Good specs, fast, wonderful extended warranties Disadvantages: Feels a bit flimsy, no indicator lights showing wifi connection, etc.
...battery power (like my old Dell Inspiron does). Some people hate that. I'm not too bothered as I rarely paid attention to those lights, anyway. It also has buttons on the keypad to let you mute or change volume, which is very nice as my husband's last laptop didn't have that and it seemed to take forever for him to get the volume down if an ad popped up or a page had music! My current laptop has the "media" keys on the edge of the case facing me, ... ...and flimsier than our last Dell laptops that were bought four years ago. The Specs of our laptop: 3 gig of RAM 250 gb hard drive Intel Celeron Dual Core T1600 (1.66 ghz, 667mhz, 1MB) Vista Home Premium 4-year in-home warranty support 4-year accidental damage support Total Cost (including warranties): £660 The Warranty: Now here is what I really love! We've already had two mishaps with this computer (husband is bad to drop or spill), and it was repaired ...
pippy_pop 06.08.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop
Advantages: Cheap, good brand, lots of features, Disadvantages: Probably not powerful enough for games, bottom of the market now
The Dell Inspiron 1545 is an easy to use entry level laptop. Unlike two years ago when I bought my previous laptop, you can now get a number of Dell computers (of which this is one) direct from high street retailers. This is good if you want it in a rush and want a nearby place to handle any issues, but has the disadvantage that you can't customise your laptop to your own requirements to the same extent that you can if you buy it direct from Dell ... ...webcam. I've been using Dell Inspiron laptops for a few years, so when my family told me a few months ago that they needed a new laptop, I picked a Dell Inspiron 1545 for them. A key motivation for me was the certain knowledge that I would be the main technical support person if anything went wrong with their computer. In the few months they have had it, I've only had to help them out a couple of times. One of these problems did require a reinstall ...
beckyXX 27.09.2009 (08.10.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop
Advantages: Losts of storage space, Reasonable price, Great multitasker Disadvantages: Not for games due to poor graphics card and slower processor
The Dell inspiron 1545 is a good, reasonable laptop for someone like a college student who has lots of work to do on Microsoft word and want to have the ability to multitask such as listening to music without any lag or slowness. The laptop has an Intel Celeron processor (2.2GHz), which is great for multitasking but bad for games. If you want a laptop for gaming the best processor to go for (at a reasonable price) is a Core 2 duo processor. I recently ... ...smoothly as it could, mainly being the fact that the processor and graphics card (Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family) is the most basic. Other features is the built-in camera which isn't very good, the pixels are poor, but does have a fun feature that lets you change your face shape and background etc but if you like to Messenger then I suggest you go out and buy a better webcam. However, the laptop has 3GB RAM which is sufficient for ...
mistystorm 22.06.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop
Advantages: The look of the dell inspiron laptop seems more classy then other notepads. It is simplistic. Disadvantages: Maybe Dell Have gone too simplistic with this model as the features are nothing to rave about
The Dell inspiron laptop has an attractive classy look, it has a simplistic stream-line look. When I take it out its case I feel good about it because its not a big bulky embarassing computer thing. However, if your one for keeping everything clean and tidy and no smudges anywhere, then maybe you might be irritated by this laptop. With its glossy look smudges, smears and fingerprints stand out like a sore thumb. You feel like your constantly wiping ... ...A better idea for Dell would be to provide a cloth to clean it with, one they know wont damage your laptop. It would be a real bummer to scratch it while cleaning it. I also decided to get the colour black because there wasnt a lot of colours to choose from which I found quite dissapointing as the other types of dell laptop you can have one in every colour.
I also found the set up quite confusing with the desktop being along the top. It seems quite ...
coolchick2458 27.05.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop
