Review of Inspiron 1720 from Dell Outlet

lovetwix

Received 1720 yesterday, my first impression was ..omg..it's HUGE..

Spec:

Core 2 Duo T7300 2Ghz
2* 1G DDR2 Memory
160G HD (5400 RPM)
256M DDR2 Geforce 8600M GT
17 inch Wide Screen (1920*1200)
DVDRW

at a price around 800 Euro incl VAT and Delivery... for a inspirion 1720, it's really a good margin.. although for a similar spec, Vostro won't cost too much either..

The 160GB HD was divided into 3 partitions, a recovery partition of 10GB, Media Direct partition of 2GB, and the rest goes to Partition 'C'.

The first thing I did was to delete recovery partition coz' I know I won't need it anyway..then I formatted partition 'C' , so vista home premium and loads of other pre-installed software were all gone..:D

Afterwards, installed Vista ultimate, it's a dell oem version I download off torrent, many (maybe all) laptops come from DELL now have SLIC in BIOS, so vista ultimate will be activated automatically without any trouble.:o

Installing drivers under vista can't be easier with DRIVERS AND UTILITIES DISK,some drivers may not the latest version, and it can be updated later on from dell website.

The 1920*1200 wide screen was absolutely amazing, I tried a few 1080i clips.. and.. simply WOW..

Everything works very well under vista...

Then I made a new partition and started to install windows xp as vista is not a good system for gaming yet.

Installing XP is a pain for inspiron 1720, firstly you need a proper XP installation CD with a general SATA/ACHI driver support, or Windows XP Setup can't even find the hard drive, and to make it worse, for xp, there's no official driver support from DELL . I had to search around the web of each component of 1720..and then try to download the driver of a similar component from Latitude series, Vostro Series and even Precision Series.. especially for graphic card, 8600M GT is not officially supported under XP yet, it took me a while to find a modded driver... The good news is eventually I found drivers for all parts ,eg. graphic card, sound card, wireless, lan,bluetooth, touchpad.etc)

I tried 3dmarks 2005 in xp, it gave a score of 7000, good enough for me..
.

Nothing wrong has encountered so far.. the laptop looks fine (no scratch at all) and it runs perfect.

But be careful when installing new os, if AHCI is enabled in BIOS(default) , you need extra SATA driver to make it work.. for vista. it's in Driver CD and just load that when prompted to choose a partition, otherwise it will hang at "complete installation" forever. For XP, the difference is if you don't have a SATA driver it won't allow you to install at all.

If you don't really care about the little better performance that AHCI could possibly bring, just set it to 'ATA' and it solves all problems as well.

This AHCI/ATA issue took me whole night to figure out what's going on.. :mad:

The only thing I'm worrying about now is how could I possibly move this huge machine if I need to..it takes up half of my desk..:(

What I wrote above should give those interested in Dell Outlet a bit more confidence.. they are not really that bad:p

AlmightyCushion

lovetwix wrote: »

Afterwards, installed Vista ultimate, it's a dell oem version I download off torrent, many (maybe all) laptops come from DELL now have SLIC in BIOS, so vista ultimate will be activated automatically without any trouble.:o

Does it not expect vista premium? The serial stored in your bios will only work for vista premium and not for vista ultimate as they both have different serials. If you don't have a valid serial, you will be able to use vista for 30 days before it asks you to enter a valid serial.

Redisle

Is it really THAT big? any pics? I was thinking of getting one of those 1720's from the outlet with those exact specs, was bidding on one friday but it went past 860 so I decided to leave it go..
Id like to have something that I can actually use on my lap not a desk bound laptop..

AlmightyCushion

I don't know what it's like compared to my 9400 but the 9400 is grand. A little bulky but if you get a backpack for it it's fine. I bring my 9400 into college everyday and it's a 40 minute walk.

kaizersoze

ab_cork wrote: »

Is it really THAT big? any pics? I was thinking of getting one of those 1720's from the outlet with those exact specs, was bidding on one friday but it went past 860 so I decided to leave it go..
Id like to have something that I can actually use on my lap not a desk bound laptop..

...

Weight: Starting at 7.62 lbs (3.45kg)
Width: 15.5" (39.4cm)
Height: 1.5" (3.9cm) front - 1.7" (4.4cm) back
Depth: 11.5" (29.3cm

lovetwix

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Does it not expect vista premium? The serial stored in your bios will only work for vista premium and not for vista ultimate as they both have different serials. If you don't have a valid serial, you will be able to use vista for 30 days before it asks you to enter a valid serial.

No..SLIC in BIOS is 'universal' for any version of Vista... .. actually what's in BIOS is not a serial number but a block of code issued by Microsoft to identify if it's a valid DELL laptop.. as long as SLIC shows "I'm DELL", then any dell oem version of vista will be activated automatically once installation completes

lovetwix

ab_cork wrote: »

Is it really THAT big? any pics? I was thinking of getting one of those 1720's from the outlet with those exact specs, was bidding on one friday but it went past 860 so I decided to leave it go..
Id like to have something that I can actually use on my lap not a desk bound laptop..

dude...you won't like to put this giant machine on your lap..... get a 1520 instead

AlmightyCushion

lovetwix wrote: »

dude...you won't like to put this giant machine on your lap..... get a 1520 instead

I have my Inspiron 9400 on my lap right now and I have no problems with it.