I wish I could recognise the D500 machine the other reviewers of this laptop are describing. The key problem with this product is that at times it becomes so slow as to be almost unusable, even when running bread and butter Office 2000 software. No amount of disk defragmentation can resolve the slow speed issue. When opening up the laptop or after reboot, the hard drive whirls and whirls for up to half an hour, during which the extreme lag when trying to access and operate your software is such that you just can't use it.
I bought this laptop (over 36 months - way over £1,000) simply to run Word 2000, Excel 2000 and Outlook Express - it can't handle it, even though there is very little else installed on the hard drive. After a while Windows XP recognises the system is struggling and pops ups a 'Low Virtual Memory' warning in the task tray and then feverishly tries to rectify the performance shortcomings. Connecting the laptop to a monitor slows the performance even more for some reason.
Battery life? I'm lucky if I get more than two hours out of it.
I felt confident purchasing the laptop through mail order, assured by 'in the know' computer product reviewers that Dell would never stamp their name on such a worthless product (even if it was their entry-level model) - just goes to show you can't trust in reputation alone. I can now confidently predict that I will never purchase another Dell computer again - once bitten ...
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(+) positive aspects include the speed, apperance/design of the laptop, and the enhanced performance. (-) i have a matt black laptop and it shows dirty finger prints.
Advantages: Cheap, Very Upgradable, out-perform's ALL P4's because Cache size and out-performs DUAL CORE! Disadvantages: Not made anymore, Integrated Video makes upgrading hard and/or expensive.
Karusai 05.08.2009 (28.09.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
Review of Dell Latitude D500
Advantages: Cheap, Very Upgradable, out-perform's ALL P4's because Cache size and out-performs DUAL CORE! Disadvantages: Not made anymore, Integrated Video makes upgrading hard and/or expensive.
Karusai 05.08.2009 (28.09.2009)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
Review of Dell Latitude D500