5150 review

[Naptown Steve]

Being a new member to this here forum, I feel it's my duty to post my thoughts about my newly arrived 5150. It's been made clear to me that there's something a little special about owning a notebook computer--even though they'll probably be obsolete within a few years. I guess then we'll see our old lappys as old friends tying us to a more innocent time.....or not :rolleyes:


Speed: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:
Heat: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:
Weight: :banana: :banana: :banana:
Battery: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:
Screen: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:
Speakers/Audio: :banana: :banana:1/2
Keyboard :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:
Inputs: :banana: :banana: :banana:1/2
DVD/Video: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:
Noise: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:


First off let me say that overall I consider the 5150 to be a top flight machine. I'm very happy with it's performance up to this point. Now let me give you the parts of my sum.

The speed of the 5150 has been very good. It opens programs quickly and boots and shuts down quickly as well. It handles photo editing well without the bogging down that you get on slower systems. I haven't yet tried to edit video or done any heavy rendering. I'll update this post when I have. I also haven't burned a cd yet.

The 5150 doesn't run hot at all. It does get warm after a couple of hours of continuous use. I suppose if you ran it long and hard enough it might run hot. But that's not something that is an issue with me. Under what I would call normal use, I can't see it ever running hot. However it does take a while to cool down once it's gotten warm. I assume that's because of the restricted space.

It is heavy for a notebook. But then how heavy is heavy? Nine or ten pounds isn't a problem for me. I have a friend with a dell that's over 15 pounds. It might be different if I were a student lugging the thing across a campus all day and all night. But I find it very mobile. Especially considering the large screen. I wouldn't really classify it as a laptop though. A little hard on your knee bones. Maybe get a tv tray or something. One caveat; I recommend using two hands when picking it up if at all possible. It's a little unbalanced and you could easily end up with a doorstop if you're not careful.

The battery life is very good if you don't max out the settings. Recharge time is acceptable but not great.

The screen is absolutely gorgeous. Stunning. DVDs look great as does everything else. It does have the normal anomalies associated with lcd screens. But that's normal and not a defect. Lower resolutions other than the native one work fine, but they aren't near as sharp and clear as the native one (1400x1050).

The sound is not so good. Not a real surprise, but still disappointing. Think glorified pc speaker. Or for those of you over 40 like yours truly, think transistor radio. It's nearly impossible to hear normal conversation during a movie. And the speakers don't handle trying to crank up the volume to well. Bass is pretty much non-existent. Do yourself a favor and bring along some headphones or small speakers. Because unless you don't ask for much from your speakers, you'll be disappointed.

The keyboard has a nice feel to it. It does take some practice to get use to the keys. My desktop keyboard is big and roomy compared to this one so it is a bit of an adjustment. The default setting on the touchpad is a bit sensitive. You might find yourself opening programs or clinking links you never intended to click. And I'd recommend a mouse if possible. Your hand will mostly likely get sore operating the touchpad for any length of time. Athough I imagine that my hand will get used to the motion. But no real complaints to speak of.

I would have liked more inputs. However I did know what I was getting when I ordered my 5150. So I can't really complain.

So far I've had no video issues. DVDs play with ease and look great. I loaded Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. I've been running it at a very high resolution and have had no problems at all. No slow down at all and it looks stunning. I'm not really a "Gamer" so I can't really say how it will run newer more graphic intensive games. Although I can't imagine it couldn't at least play them at a lower resolution. I mostly buy driving games and FPS. I'll update this when I get a new game. I didn't really buy the 5150 for games, but I'll load them as I get them just to test them. I'm saving to build my "dream machine" desktop to play games and impress my friends and family. So it won't be an issue for me if I can't play the latest killer games on my lappy.

I can't detect any fan noise to speak of. Quiet as a church mouse is my lappy.

DO be careful where your feet are in relation to the power cord. Where the cord goes, so goes your notebook.

I hope that covers everything. I'll update my review if I remember something else. Although I want to add more memory before I consider making any final judgements. And I will update this from time to time--as I tend to abuse my computers over time. My lack of discretion when installing trial software and the like will be the greatest test for my machine. :D

One happy and satisfied (for now) 5150 owner.

Steve

[KCK]

Although 256MB RAM is enough for running Windows alone, I guess you intend to upgrade your RAM from other vendors eventually. I presume that you are aware that I5150-s require periodic cleaning of fans and heat exhaust channels.

[KingSnake]

Nice to hear another happy 5150 owner! I have had mine for almost a year now and never had a problem. I got it back when they offered the UXGA screen. Not sure why they did away with that. But it has been a great notebook and the 9 lbs really do not bother me either as I only move it around the house.

[UnMaTcHeD]

I agree with all the comments, the 5150 is a good notebook...but I ultimately returned mine for a 9100 and couldn't be happier :dude:

[DewDrop]

Excellent review; thanks so much for posting. My shiny new 5150 will be arriving today. Have nose pressed to window waiting on UPS truck...

[lozx]

My previous 5150 hanged on the first day. It hanged again a few days later. The fan is very noisy when I open many IE windows or when I am just writing a report. But its speed is great it is very very fast. The palm rest tends to get very hot. I refunded my because Dell had send me wrong specs.

[Zarfol]

hows the 64 meg gforce 5200? is it a pretty good card? could you run a 3dmark (2001 or whatever) and give the results?

[Okle]

yeah, i second that because i have heard rumors (gather 'round the campfire everyone :lol: ) that the designed-for-dx9 5200 has been getting a beating from its dx8 budget-card brethren, the radeon 9200. i dunno if it's true (which i doubt that it is), but i would like you to dispel them ol' rumorisms. :lol:

[Adam84]

Well that's good that some people have had good experience with the 5150. I am currently returning mine to Dell and exchanging it (plus some extra $$$) for an 8600. I got tired of sending it back to the service centre only to have it still disfunctional. I'm glad I managed to get full credit back. Out of 8 months of owning this thing, around 3 months of it have been spent with it either in transit or with the service centre. Most of the rest of the time has been spent just trying to ignore the problems and not getting to really use all of my stuff. Overall, I haven't had a particularly good time with this laptop, so I'm glad to finally be getting rid of it.

So what was the problem you ask? The 5150 appears to have a few problems with its design, though I suppose I can't be certain.

Anyhow, The first one I had had a flickering screen. It also seemed to have a defective battery. I immediately got a replacement after that.

The second one fried PCMCIA cars. The first one probably would have except for I didn't have a chance to test that. By fried I mean it would overheat them while simultaneously not regulating the power and the bus correctly. Well, that's what I figured at the time...I found out it also tried to ground every whichway and didn't shield the bus correctly so that caused problems as well. I have an Echo Indigo, and when *that* was in the 5150, I'd get buzz and things of that sort that are not supposed to occur. I especially enjoyed the ground loop I got when trying to use the input with a number of devices. I went through four Indigos, so I know it wasn't my card at fault (especially since it worked fine in any other laptop).

On the new motherboard, the buzz was even worse. Now it was being affected by the ethernet as well (as opposed to just the HD and Power Supply before). I sent it back to Dell and they said nothing was wrong (uh?). Obviously there was something wrong but they are pretty reluctant when it comes to fixing these.

Anyhow, I decided to just live with it until early June. I was listening to music and reached over to pick something up off the television. By this time I'd given up using the Echo since the 5150 worked pitifully with it and so I was using the onboard sound. The sound crashed as soon as I touched the TV. I restarted the machine, realising the machine not only tried to ground itself on everything BESIDES the power supply, but it is hypersensitive to ESD. I tested it again and it crashed the whole machine. I called Dell and had it sent to them etc. They fixed the LCD screen and keyboard which had broken in the months prior, but not the motherboard (again). However, in the meantime, I tested a few other 5150s and they all have trouble regulating power to the PCMCIA bus and don't maintain the bus clock within appropriate tolerances.

Not all 5150s are *this* sensitive, but the design problems appear to be pretty globalised. I took the whole thing apart and ran various tests (I work at a lab, so it wasn't too difficult). The computer seems to have essentially no shielding whatsoever, which I imagine is what causes a lot of its suceptability to interference, but jeez...it's pretty gruesome.

The 5150 is blisteringly fast, but I have not been impressed with the overall design. I imagine some of this is difficult to avoid given the ample power drained by the system's resources (p4, M9, etc.), but putting the hard drive directly above the PCMCIA slot wasn't exactly a brilliant maneuver.

As far as the sound being relatively poor (and it is) on the built in card, it seems to be Dell's fault. Sigmatel said that that codec is rated for over 90db SNR. In fact, I think they said something along the lines of around 95db. Dell's implementation isn't even close to that, and I suspect it's because they didn't properly shield it (like everything else). While Sigmatel's figure is likely not dead-on accurate in terms of overall performance since it's using the usual a-weighted measurement, it is doubtful that the performance problem is their fault. Most Dell Laptops I've used, though, have pretty noise onboard sound, so I wasn't particularly surprised. It wasn't exactly a problem for me, though, until I found out the laptop just did not like my Indigo.

Overall, I've been disappointed with the 5150. The weight never bothered me since I'm used to large notebooks, but the build quality wasn't exactly stellar. However, even those quibbles didn't really bother me. The PCMCIA thing drove me nuts because I didn't enjoy not being able to use my 170 dollar 24/96 sound card. The hypersensitivity to RFI and ESD was also quite obnoxious.

My ratings for it:

Performance (as in raw power): 8,5/10
Reliability: 3/10
Features: 8/10 (no ISA bus, so no parallel, serial, or PS/2...kinda annoying)
Screen: 9/10 - the UXGA screen really is gorgeous
Build Quality: 7/10
Engineering: 4/10
Value: 8/10

Overall: 6,5-7/10 - It's a decent laptop. It's fast and well proportioned, but it has some crippling design faults. It is not a machine I would comfortable recommend to someone. However, if one is not interested in doing advanced sorts of things with it, it will probably work fine and it *does* come with a good feature set for the price.

And before people start screaming "user error", I isolated pretty much everything I could. I even did controlled tests (using other 5150s) as much as I could, and also compared against other laptops (1100,1150,2300,7000,8100, some Gateway laptop, an HP laptop, and a Sager). The 5150 was the only one that put up a huge fit with the Echo Indigo. It also was the only one that tried to fry a US Robotics wireless card :p.

To answer the question about why Dell doesn't ship it with the UXGA screen anymore...

Apparently a very substantial portion of UXGA 5150s had a problem with the screen flickering when on battery power and with brightness set to anything but the highest setting. It seems many people kept sending the machines back to Dell and complaining on forums (including the Dell forums) of the flickering screen and how Dell won't fess up to the problem. So Dell, instead of issuing a recall or things of that sort, just stopped shipping the UXGA screen to minimise the hassle to themselves in the future.

[Okle]

wow this seems like a pretty bad design for the 5150... haha now i get to laugh at my math teacher when i go back to school, back get him an echo indigo as an xmas present. :lol:

[Adam84]

wow this seems like a pretty bad design for the 5150... haha now i get to laugh at my math teacher when i go back to school, back get him an echo indigo as an xmas present. :lol:

Well, it's often difficult to outright accuse a company of a poor design. The design is actually pretty good except for three things; shielding, power, and placing the HD right above the PCMCIA slot. Besdies that, the layout is pretty nice. It's easy to work on the laptop and it moves heat relatively well. However, those three things seem to really hurt the 5150.

I was first tipped off on the power supply by the problem people are having with the flickering UXGA screen. Every 5150 I have seen flickers, however only a few flicker noticeably. My eyes are sensitive to light, though, so I seem to notice these things more often. The UXGA screens are the ones that have the really noticeable flickering problem. It doesn't happen on all of them, though, and this 5150 has had the LCD replaced due to the backlight going dim. This new screen performs identically (as in the flicker is same speed, pattern, etc.) as the old one. It's not a very obvious flicker but, like I said, I'm rather sensitive to changes in light. It seems to me the flickering problem is more a problem with the power supply (internal) than the screens. It looks sort of like it's undervolting, actually.

This seems to then affect the PCMCIA slot and also produce a precarious situation. I mean, if you're going to have a 5V device running right above a 3,3V device, make sure to properly shield everything and make sure the computer can regulate the power correctly. It doesn't seem as if Dell took the time (or money) to do this.

I tried the indigo in all those other laptops and it didn't put up a fuss. The 1100 and 1150 have the same form factor as the 5150 and even with them the Echo didn't seem to act up (though I didn't get to test the input). I have an Indigo I/O, btw. Still, the HD being in the same bay as the PCMCIA slot (only a few millimetres above my card) I feel is quite precarious (and it seems as if that fear plays itself out in actual use with the 5150).

I don't think it's a *bad* machine; it just seems as if they skimped on a few details that they shouldn't have. With proper shielding and a more robust power supply, I imagine it would have been fine.

Although, concerning the 1150, we have some of them at work and one of them I shut down one night, came back the next day, and it wouldn't boot at all. It was acting as if the power cord was pulled out and no battery was in it. I checked the voltage on the battery and it was reading about 2,98V, which means cells had decomposed in the battery. I checked the external power supply and it was reading about 19,55V, which is within reasonable tolerances for its 19,5V rating. It seems as if some sort of short happened, though I'm not sure of the nature of it since I haven't enough data. I've read that a lot of people have had the same problem, or a problem with it taking a long time for it to power on. So it looks as if this form factor, in general, is having problems.

I feel bad, though, as I don't want to scare the 5150 owners or soon-to-be. Again, I don't think it's a bad machine and, if you aren't going to use it for the specialised uses that I did, you may not even notice these problems. In fact, I hope that all of the 5150 owners have a trouble-free experience with it. I just wanted to get in my side of the story just in case someone else has had these problems and is wondering if it's "just them."