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Dell Inspiron 1720 - An owner’s review.
Back in 2007 I decided it would be necessary for me to have a laptop to take to university with me, much to the disgust of my father who would ultimately have to finance such a purchase.
But I began the search for a laptop of both a reasonable price and a high technical specification. I wanted to be able to play any game I wanted with relative ease and also be able to work, watch movies and more importantly take it around with me. I had heard a few things from my friends and colleagues telling me the pros and cons of certain laptop brands ranging from Acer, to Sony to Dell and ultimately I settled for a Dell Inspiron 1720. This was based on the fact that Dells customer care is highly regarded and reliable and they will strive to make sure that your laptop is constantly in working order, with same day repairs any time call outs to come and get it fixed.
I have been using this laptop for about a year now and I have to say it is a fantastic piece of equipment, the 1720 boasts a 17 inch wide-screen which is excellent for watching movies and playing games with high graphical content. If you upgrade it to a larger resolution you can even use it for editing and have multiple windows open at once. Another good point of having this large screen means that there is enough space under it for a full keyboard with numberpad, most laptops don’t have a numberpad on the right hand side but this does and it is very useful for quickly typing in numbers into spreadsheets or conversations.
This laptop comes with all the usual ports and drives, 5 USB ports, a firewire port, a DVD burner, Memory stick slots, wireless card slots, internet ports etc. And they are arranged in an easy enough manner and easy to reach. Another handy built in function on this laptop is the built in 2megapixel webcam and microphone that are built into the lid of the computer. It’s great for instantly talking to friends and relatives who are in other locations without having to plug in various recording devices. (Seeing as mine are in another continent it’s particularly useful)
When I bought it there was the option of having the cover come in various different colours ranging from Black to Pink. I opted for Midnight Blue but colour is at your own preference and does not really affect the user experience.
Now for some technical specifications. This laptop has a dual-core processor that can be upgraded or downgraded at your leisure to suit your budget, I opted for a 2.0ghz processor with 2GB ram Memory. A 140GB Hard-drive and a GeForce 8600M GT Graphics Card. These all combined make it a very nice machine to run, some might say this could be a desktop replacement. The graphics card in total comes up with about 700mb of graphics memory which is enough to run most games comfortably (although I recently tried to run crysis on high settings which did not work). The 2GB ram also allows me to run windows vista perfectly without any problems. I have heard many people saying vista is rubbish and slow and not user friendly but I have been using it since I got this computer and find it very good indeed. Perhaps a vista review may come later.
Now I hear you say...surely this thing has some bad points. It does.
This size comes at a price; it’s somewhat heavy at about 8.5 pounds which can make it hard to carry around but most of the time I found I didn’t really care (mostly because I have a good laptop bag). The weight is not really noticeable when you’re walking, and once you’ve got to where you’re going you can rest safe in the knowledge that you’re going to have one of the better laptops around.
Another point would be the battery life. Do not go anywhere without the power cables as you will soon find in an hour or two your having to pack up and come back due to a flat battery.
Now cost. Well I bought mine when I was in Malaysia and it cost me about £730, which for what you’re getting is very good. If you were to buy it somewhere else such as the UK or America this price will probably increase, but you can customise the parts and hardware to suit different budgets. Getting slightly less processing power to save you some money might be a good option.
All in all this computer is a very good machine and I would fully recommend it to anyone wanting a multi-purpose laptop for gaming, and working. The Dell 1720 should be available for purchase at Dell.com
