Dell Inspiron 3000

In a move aimed at clarifying the position and target of its notebooks, Dell has taken a two-pronged approach. The Latitudes are now firmly aimed at corporate customers, with fewer, less dramatic, managed model updates spread over longer periods of time. The new Inspiron range, of which the 3000 is the first we've seen, constitutes Dell's faster moving performance range and will incorporate new technologies as and when they become available.

The Inspiron 3000 is certainly a far cry from the Latitude CP we reviewed last month (issue 39, p171). The first difference is in the design of the case: in a move away from previous methods, Dell has gone for a more generic look. In fact, we're already seeing notebooks from other manufacturers with a very similar design. The result is a somewhat less polished product than we expect from Dell.

The positioning of the touchpad is often a problem with such generic boxes. When I started typing on the Inspiron I discovered that it's too close to the keyboard. This meant that, on more than a few occasions, as I went to hit the space bar my thumb brushed the pad and repositioned the cursor elsewhere on the page.

Apart from this, the rest of the build and design of the Inspiron 3000 is functional, if not entirely desirable. It's not particularly small or big, and at a snip over 3kg it's an average weight. The touchpad is sensitive and reliable in use and the keyboard is reasonably pleasant to type on. Plenty of travel and a good positive action help mitigate the irritation of an overly backspace key.

While some recent notebooks have fit both CD-ROM and floppy units at the same time, the Inspiron 3000 has taken the tried and tested route of having just one modular bay in which you can install either the floppy drive, the 20-speed Torisan CD-ROM drive or a second battery. You can connect the floppy drive externally using the serial cable provided, while the CD drive sits in the bay. But it's hardly elegant.

Slotted in front of the bay is the main battery. This has a useful LED indicator on the outside so you can check battery life without having to remove it. On the opposite side, under the left palm rest, is the 3.2Gb IBM hard disk which can be taken out quickly by removing a couple of screws.

Everything else about the case is as it should be, with a pretty standard array of ports and sockets. The PC Card slots allow you to fit two Type II or one Type III cards. Along the rear there's a PS/2 connection for an external mouse and keyboard, a docking station connector, parallel, serial and VGA-out ports as well as a single USB socket just below the 4Mbits/sec infrared transceiver.

A sizeable 13.3in TFT screen gives you plenty of real estate for running multiple applications and has a uniform brightness. It's driven by a 2Mb NeoMagic graphics chipset that will do 16-bit colour in 1,024 x 768. Completing the multimedia set is a pair of thin-sounding speakers backed up by some reasonably competent noises from the 16-bit wavetable Crystal sound chip.

The engine powering the Inspiron 3000 is Intel's latest and fastest 233MHz Tillamook processor, drawing on 32Mb of SDRAM and 512Kb of cache. The whole thing is built around an Intel 430TX chipset, and performance is almost level with the fastest notebook we've seen - the ACI Acumen P233MMO (reviewed issue 38, p163).

One major advantage for laptops using the new Tillamook processor is that it runs at a power-efficient 1.8V. What this means in terms of battery life is that even with a 13.3in TFT screen the lithium ion battery in the Inspiron gave us a highly impressive two hours and 42 minutes of word processing with the occasional reboot, without any of the standard power management features turned on.