Dell Inspiron 8600c > Reviews (5)

The mobile technology of centrino is proably one of the most essential feature one should look for when buying a laptop now. Wireless technology is taking over and this model just suits it all.

It has a exceptional 17 inch screen which makes it exceptionally big and bulky for a laptop. I am a hardcore graphics user and i upgraded to 512 DDR RAM which STILL doesn't give me what a desktop would, however it is just a laptop and one shouldn't expect it to perform as powerful as a desktop, ever.

Inspiron 8600 is catered for those with high graphic usage potential, I'm not talking about those who plays computer games with high graphics resolution, but I'm more about graphics designers, people who user programs like CAD, vectorworks, artlantis and so on. These are true hardcore graphics powered tools and Inspiron 8600 with NVIDIA Geforce 4200 just about does the trick... just about. A desktop is still more powerful so if you have the space and don't need the portability of the laptop, get a desktop.

The keyboard has a nice touch and the processor is very quiet, unlike some laptops which just makes loads of noise.

I leave my laptop on almost 24/7 and it's fine, so from this point I think it's a heavy duty laptop and suitable for heavy use.

The setback of this laptop could be that it's heavy, about 3.5kgs, and it's big and bulky, a price to pay for a high graphics compatible laptop. The quality and standard is good, the service dell gives is exceptional, that I can't deny. I'm very satisfied with this laptop, however more RAM would be needed in my opinion if you were to do some serious graphics rendering. 512MB at the moment is still not enough.

The disk space of 40GB I have at the moment is not quite sufficient and probably will get an external hard drive to store more files.

Another bad feature of this is the USB ports. Only 2 is installed, quite poor if you ask me and they are installed at the back! With modern tools coming equipped with USB features, having ports at the back of the laptop isnt really very smart. But I suppose you can overcome this by buying extra USB ports which have cables extending as God permits.

I would also like to add how useful I find the additional on keyboard fast keys which allows users to shut down the computer with a single press of a button, and able to stop a movie, pause it, forward or rewind it with a single button press. I'm talking about using the mouse to click, but pressing a key on the keyboard to actually do these most used functions. Amazingly convenient.

I hope this is helpful and you would rate this as professional as my opinions are.