Carla Thornton

Dell Inspiron 2500

For a miserly $1199, Dell's new budget laptop for consumers and small businesses comes equipped with a 14.1-inch screen, easy-to-reach parts, and an extra set of dual-purpose buttons that play music CDs or launch applications. If you don't like that configuration, Dell offers many more options than is typical for a single notebook model: a smaller or bigger screen, a slower or faster processor (up to a Pentium III-800), a hard drive as large as 20GB, plus TV-out, an IEEE 1394 port, and network connections.
Short battery life tops the list. One charge of the 2500's four-cell battery lasts 1.5 hours--about half as long as the typical laptop and far behind performers like Gateway's Solo notebooks, which chug along for 4 or 5 hours. (An eight-cell battery is available for $49 more.) We also have a few gripes with the design of the dual-purpose buttons. Unlike other laptops, which include convenient hardware switches for dual-purpose buttons, the 2500 makes you use a software utility to change from audio-control mode to shortcut mode and vice versa. And though the Inspiron 2500 has an unusually long list of high-end options, a docking connection isn't one of them. Performance could be a little better: In our PC WorldBench 2000 tests, the 2500 lagged behind the other Celeron-700 unit we tested at the same time, the Toshiba Satellite 1755, by about 10 percent.
The midweight Inspiron 2500 weighs 6.7 pounds without peripherals, and measures almost 2 inches tall. At this low price, you get a fixed 10X-24X CD-ROM drive on the side, and until July, a removable floppy drive in the modular front bay. By August Dell plans to end a special promotion for Inspiron 2500 laptops with 14.1- and 15-inch screens and start charging an undetermined extra amount for the floppy drive. Alternatively, you can buy a 100MB Zip drive for $139 more. Aside from a hollow travel bezel that Dell says will shave the notebook's weight to about 6 pounds, the bay does not accommodate any other types of devices, such as a second battery. We liked the 2500's steady keyboard and the easy-to-access hard drive, which can be pulled out of the side after you've removed two screws on the bottom. The touchpad teams with huge gray mouse buttons that can be reprogrammed to launch your favorite applications or Web sites. Want to jazz up this all-black laptop's looks? You can swap the removable palm rests for another color--Dell sells a $19.95 set of four, in blue, gray, yellow, and purple. Awash in documentation, the 2500 includes a setup guide, a thin troubleshooting manual, and desktop links to an electronic manual and online Dell technicians. However, we had trouble finding information on some basic notebook features, such as the dual-purpose buttons.
Looking for a relatively cheap notebook with lots of perks, including a big screen? With its smallish hard drive and integrated video memory, this particular configuration of the new Dell Inspiron 2500 may not be for multimedia pros, but budget-minded Web designers and penny pinchers should take a close look. You'll want to spring for the extra $49 to buy a longer-lasting battery, and you'll possibly want another 64MB of RAM to satisfy the memory-hogging Windows Me operating system.

Buying Information

Dell Inspiron 2500 PC WorldBench 2000 score of 105, Celeron-700, 64MB of SDRAM, 128KB L2 cache, Windows Millennium Edition, 14.1-inch active-matrix screen, integrated Intel I815em graphics, 5GB hard drive, 10X-24X CD-ROM drive, built-in V.90 modem, touchpad pointing device, 7.7 pounds (including AC adapter and phone cord), Microsoft Works Suite 2001 with Money 2001 Standard. One-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free tech support. $ 1199 PC WorldBench 2000 score of 105, Celeron-700, 64MB of SDRAM, 128KB L2 cache, Windows Millennium Edition, 14.1-inch active-matrix screen, integrated Intel I815em graphics, 5GB hard drive, 10X-24X CD-ROM drive, built-in V.90 modem, touchpad pointing device, 7.7 pounds (including AC adapter and phone cord), Microsoft Works Suite 2001 with Money 2001 Standard. One-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free tech support. 800/388-8542 http://www.dell.com