Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop

The Dell Inspiron 1545 was bought for me from PC World as a Christmas present, however due to the fact that mobility problems were preventing me from being able to sit at the computer desk, I was actually given it a good month before Christmas and have been using it for a couple of months now. Although the Inspiron 1545 can be customised on Dell’s own website, this was bought as a standard model, with only the choice being which colour the top was, ...
...the equivalent from Dell direct at only £399 including free delivery.

===The Styling===

The 1545 is one shiny laptop, every surface (bar the screen) has a high gloss finish, which acts as a positive magnet to dust, fingerprints and smears. It is, however, easy enough to clean with keyboard wipes. The top of the outer casing comes in a range of 5 different colours, I personally chose cherry red, and it does look very smart. ... more

The Dell Inspiron 1545 was bought for me from PC World as a Christmas present, however due to the fact that mobility problems were preventing me from being able to sit at the computer desk, I was actually given it a good month before Christmas and have been using it for a couple of months now. Although the Inspiron 1545 can be customised on Dell’s own website, this was bought as a standard model, with only the choice being which colour the top was, but it did work out a lot cheaper than buying the equivalent from Dell direct at only £399 including free delivery.

The Styling

The 1545 is one shiny laptop, every surface (bar the screen) has a high gloss finish, which acts as a positive magnet to dust, fingerprints and smears. It is, however, easy enough to clean with keyboard wipes. The top of the outer casing comes in a range of 5 different colours, I personally chose cherry red, and it does look very smart. Other colours available include pink, blue and ice-white.

The screen of my particular model is a 15.6 inch ‘True-Life’ LCD widescreen display, which is crystal clear, whether I’m browsing the internet, viewing photos or watching DVDs.

Setting Up

As with most computers (whether Desktop or Laptop), there was a small amount of set-up required before the first use. Obviously the battery needed charging, which was simply a case of plugging into the wall, but the set-up could still be continued while plugged into the mains. Set-up was simple enough, a few details needed to be entered during the final installation of the operating system, but it took no more than 20 minutes before I was ready to start customising the settings to my own personal tastes. The final part of the set-up involved going to the Dell website to register the computer as belonging to myself.

The Operating System

My Inspiron came with Windows 7 installed, now I don’t mind saying that I was very apprehensive at the idea of using such a recently released operating system, especially considering my bad experience of using Windows ME and Vista. I know my way round (and like) Windows XP and so started using Windows 7 from a very biased point of view. It was, however, easy to start using Windows 7, and I’m actually starting to come round to the new layout. Start-up appears to be much quicker than XP and so far I’ve had few problems with compatibility issues. Those issues I’ve had, have been easily remedied by using the backward compatibility function, which is painless and has allowed all my programs to run without issue. I can’t say I’ve had any problems with installing any of my peripherals either, although I did have to download new drivers for my mobile broadband dongle. All in all, I’m pretty impressed with Windows 7, it appears to run smoothly and quickly with none of the teething troubles usually associated with a newly released version of Windows.

Basic Use

The keyboard is of a fairly standard layout, and reasonably ergonomic, I have no problems typing out documents. There isn’t a numeric keypad though, which does slow me down a little when entering numbers. I also had a bit of difficulty finding the ‘del’ key for those times when I needed to use the ubiquitous Ctrl, Alt, Del combination, but if I’d used my brains I’d have realised it was simply labelled delete. There are a number of shortcut keys along the top of the keyboard, which are handy for such things as volume control, switching the wi-fi on and off and switching between the screen and an external monitor. The touchpad, is fairly easy to use, but can be a little over-sensitive, I do sometimes find myself opening web-pages that I hadn’t intended to or highlighting areas on documents that didn’t need highlighting. It does, however, respond well to the gentlest of double taps.

The lap-top came supplied with various programs, the majority of which are trial versions. There’s a month trial of McAfee anti-virus that does a reasonable job, but was quickly replaced with AVG. Along with the full version of Works, there is a trial version of Microsoft Office that I’ve not even bothered opening, Works does everything I need. The included Roxio DVD burning software is extremely simple, and I’ve only used it a couple of times, it does work, but there’s very little that can be customised. Windows DVD maker, though, is pretty good, if again a little basic.

DVDs can be viewed using either Windows media player, or PowerDVD and in both cases they are played faultlessly. Audio Cds are also played without problems, ripping is quick and simple using WMP as is burning compilation discs. I wouldn’t say the inbuilt speakers are necessarily the best, but for me they are perfectly adequate, music sounds fine but if I wanted to blast my ear drums I would burn a disc and use my CD player. Similarly it’s perfectly adequate to watch and listen to DVDs, but if I want cinema style sound then I’d use my surround sound and television.

Advanced Use

As well as bog-standard web browsing and word-processing, I also use my Inspiron to work with video editing software, creating DVDs from AVI files and DVDs created on DVD recorders. With this sort of work there are several components in the computer that can speed this process up (or slow it down). The model I own has a dual core Intel Pentium processor running at 2.10Ghz along with 3GB RAM, and this combination allows me to convert video in a little under real time, while still being able to browse the web, play simple games or write a review. I’ve never had a problem with anything overheating either, I have had this problem occasionally with other desktops and laptops, especially when spending a few hours converting video. So far the longest batch job of converting lasted for over 8 hours and although the table the laptop was sitting on became a little warm, the laptop itself had none of the usual problems associated with overheating, such as hanging or switching itself off.

The 16x DVD burner does a reasonable job, I’ve had no compatibility issues when using DVD-R or +R, but not once has it recognised my discs to be 16x and has only burnt them at 8x which takes about quarter of an hour. Cds, however, are burnt exceptionally quickly, taking less than 5 minutes.

The hard drive is advertised as being 250GB, but this is partitioned into two, with one of these partitions being taken up by the recovery data. This leaves a reasonable 218GB that is formatted with the more efficient NTFS, which allows files greater than 4GB to be saved. This space does get eaten up quite quickly though, I’ve always found that the larger the hard drive the quicker I fill it, and as all computers work faster if the hard drive is not cluttered, I have supplemented this with a 1.5TB external drive. I do find that transfer to the internal hard drive from memory cards is almost instantaneous.

This particular laptop also comes with a 1.3MP webcam, which is fairly simple to use and does a reasonable if not spectacular job. As long as the light is good photos and videos are perfectly viewable, and there are a number of special effects and frames that can be used. When used to video chat it does the job a lot better than web cams I’ve owned previously with both video and audio being perfectly acceptable.

I do not use this laptop for playing any games, let alone those that are resource hungry when it comes to graphics, but as this version of the 1545 has an integrated graphics card I would imagine it’s not really going be the best to play these games on. Perfect for watching DVDs, but nothing much more taxing than that.

Connectivity

My 1545 has a number of options for connectivity the most obvious of which is WLAN (wireless card). This is easily switched on and off and even though I’m not using it at the moment (I have mobile broadband through a dongle) it does pick up networks very quickly and is easy to configure using Microsoft’s connection manager. If you prefer to be ‘hard-wired’ to the internet there is also an Ethernet connection available.

The number of available USB connections is a little disappointing at a measly three, I already find that I have to swap connections around, due to the fact that one is permanently occupied by my dongle. They are all the standard high speed version though. There is also a handy memory card reader which offers a high speed transfer of files both to and from my digital camera’s SD HC card. Finally there is VGA port for connection to an external display that I’ve never used and therefore can’t really comment on.

Although it’s not on my computer Bluetooth is also available as an option when purchasing from Dell direct. But I will say that I have used a Bluetooth dongle on this and it was automatically installed (without a CD) and works perfectly well.

Portability

The 1545 is quite a hefty machine, weighing in at 2.64kg, it does cause a dent in my shoulder when carried around in a laptop bag. The battery-life is also not particularly brilliant, advertised as up to 2hours, I’m lucky to get 1.5 hours out of it even when switching the wireless off, not having the dongle connected and playing around with all the power settings. Turning the wireless on drastically reduces this to just under an hour as does watching DVDs. I very rarely run this on battery power as I find with what I want to use it for the battery just wouldn’t last.

Durability

While, for obvious reasons, I’ve been very careful with this laptop (it’s certainly not been dropped), it has been moved from room to room and gone on the occasional trip in a laptop bag and it’s suffered no harm. Although it does seem to positively attract fingerprints and dust, it hasn’t acquired any scratches and appears pretty robust. It has had extensive use of the last couple of months, being switched on for, on average, 10 hours a day, spending a high percentage of that time doing very processor intensive video editing. And it hasn’t suffered a single problem or issue, and by that I mean, I haven’t had a single program crashing, it has never overheating or even slowed. Finally after a quick wipe it still looks as good as new, the lettering on the keypad hasn’t faded at all, the keys are all exactly where they should be and it looks all glossy and shiny.

Conclusion

My Inspiron 1545 was bought for me as a present from PC World for a very reasonable £399 and as such was not customisable. If it had been purchased from Dell direct then I could have changed and improved many of the specifications, but this would have cost considerably more. However, the specifications on this actually suited my purpose almost exactly, so I’m more than happy with my Christmas present, it does exactly what I want, looks nice and seems to be problem-free. While not the highest specification possible, it’s perfect for browsing the web, viewing and editing photos, creating Cds and DVDs, and word-processing. In fact, it’s perfect for most family use, possibly only falling down when it comes to graphic intensive games and battery-life. Taking up far less room than a conventional desk-top and yet as powerful as many desktops of a similar price. Although the price has now increased to £439.97 it’s still well worth the price for what it can do.

Specs of this Machine at PC World

Operating System : Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor Type : Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300
Processor Speed : 2.10Ghz, IMB Cache
Memory Size : 3GB
Memory Type : ddr2 800mhz
Hard drive Capacity : 250 GB
Optical Drive : DVD+-RW
Screen Size : 15.6 inches
Graphics Card : Intel 4 Series Integrated
Graphics Memory : Shared
TV Out : No
Sound Type : 2 Integrated
Wireless Enabled : Yes
No. USB Ports : 3
Other Interfaces : Card Reader, VGA
Battery Type : 4 Cell
Battery Life (Up to) : 2 hours
Weight : 2.64kg
Width : 374mm

 

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