List Price: $649.99
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I am very pleased with this Dell laptop. Initial set up was smooth and subsequent additions of my existing programs went well. I especially like the textured finish on this model. Looks and feels very nice. The 17.3 display is also very nice. The only addition I added was a wireless mouse which makes it almost as complete as my desk top model which I used constantly in my business. The model runs extremely quiet with hardly any noise at all. It should be noted that not everyone might like this size model since it is larger than one might expect, but that is what I wanted for remote work. Overall I am extremely pleased so far and highly recommend this model for anyone looking for a larger laptop with plenty of power for online work and office applications.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I've had prior experience with a 17inch laptop before; i owned a Gateway 6860fx and it was a bad experience. I hadnt used a 17inch laptop since then until i tried this Dell 17inch. After a month of having this in my possession i really like it alot; and would definitely recommend it for those looking for a mid-tier 17inch laptop for everyday use. The following are the notes i've taken in my month with the product:-I got roughly 3 hours on highest performance setting while watching Netflix. General use, you can easily get 4hours.
-It takes roughly 1min to open from cold boot. From standby it takes like 10 seconds.
-The lcd lid doesnt have a latch or anything. Just pull up to open. Because of this it doesnt open very easily and you need to use both your hands (one to pull the lid , the other to hold the bottom down)
-The sound levels produced by the speakers are adequate.
-Very rarely gets hot on my lap, and its very quiet... even when I did some stress testing on the CPU.
-I think that the build quality is great. The gateway 6860 started breaking down eventually but i dont see that happening with this one.
-The indicator lights on the front are small and hard to see. The power button doesnt have any light.
-Really can be considered light-weight for 17in: Its 5.8 lbs with a small ac adapter. (my old gateway was 9.2 + it had a huge block ac adapter)
So it wouldnt be to much of a pain to carry around, especially since AC adapter is so small and the computer itself isnt thick either.
webcam quality was great on my calls via skype.
Max resolution is 1600x900. But the overall quality is nice even though i did have to adjust gamma and contrast ratings to my liking cause i felt they were off some.
Other tidbits:
-Touchpad supports multitouch gestures(eg pinch zoom , two finger scrolling)
-5.6 windows exp index.
-685 GB usable from the 750GB HDD, but also had 35GB already used by windows 8 and bloatware
-Textured surface is nice but a fingerprint magnet. You can see the places your fingers touched.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program My Laptop & Windows History:Prior to getting this laptop I'd been using my previous one for about 4 years. It was an ASUS and had Windows 7 on it. I liked that one but it was getting old and outdated, full and slow. It was time for a new one. Earlier this year I purchased a Samsung laptop that came with Windows 8. The laptop was horrible. It was slow and cheaply made. I ended up returning it after just a few days. Since this was my first experience with Windows 8 it left a bad impression in my head. I thought my problem with that laptop had something to do with that. When we returned that laptop we told Customer Service that it was like taking a laptop from 10 years ago and slapping a new title on it and installing Windows 8 on it. It was really primitive.
This Laptop with Windows 8:
I was a bit nervous getting a new laptop that comes with Windows 8 but that's pretty much all you can find on the market today. Turns out that I was nervous for nothing. This laptop is great! Although I'm not a huge fan of Windows 8, it's certainly not as bad as I thought it was. It's easy to maneuver around it.
Size and Keyboard Layout:
I have a Dell 15.6 inch touch screen laptop that I use for my everyday usage. Then I have this 17.3" laptop that I find a bit bigger than I need for everyday use but when I want to play a game or even watch a movie on, this size is perfect. This laptop has become what I'm referring to as my gaming laptop. I also do a ton of typing so the keyboard layout is very important to me. I find the layout on 17.3" laptop very comfortable and spaced out perfectly. It's not compact by any means and it's not too spaced out that you have to reach too far either. Except for the number pad, if you use the number pad quite frequently then it's a bit more difficult on this laptop. This is where I find the spacing to be a bit too far apart. The layout on this laptop is pretty close to perfect for me. The number pad isn't horrible, it's just going to take some getting used to.
Other thoughts:
Speed & QuietnessI think this laptop is very fast. And I love how you can boot it up and you're good to go in less than a minute. It's very quiet too.
Picture QualityThe picture looks great on this laptop. Making it great for my games. With that Samsung laptop that I had, the picture quality was awful. I have absolutely no complaints about the graphic quality on this laptop. It's very high quality.
Space750GB is more than I required but for the price it can't be beat. It'll hold I that I need it to.
CD / DVD DriveA CD Drive is not an option for me, it must have one. There are so many laptops out there nowadays that no longer have this feature. I was very happy to see that this laptop has it. It works great too. On my previous laptop I was constantly accidentally opening the CD Drive. This isn't a problem on this laptop. It stays closed. You have to push a small little button in just the right way to get this one to pop open. This is a plus for me.
Textured FinishAlthough I like the feel of the textured finish on this laptop, it leaves way too many fingerprints. It's difficult to clean them off too. When the laptop is just lying there closed it doesn't look too great because it always looks like there are greasy fingerprints all over it. Our hands are always clean when we use the laptop so it's just the oils from your skin that leaves marks. This would probably be the only thing that I would complain about with this laptop.
SolidnessWhen I had the Samsung laptop for a few days I noticed that it felt empty. It just felt like an empty plastic shell. This laptop feels solid and it's not a cheap plastic feel. This laptop feels how a laptop should feel.
Getting startedRight out of the box I found this laptop to be fast and easy to set-up. I had it up and running in probably 5-10 minutes. It's a very simple set-up process.
Overall I absolutely love this laptop and I would highly recommend it. It's a great everyday laptop that I find to be very high quality.
Honest reviews on Dell Inspiron 17 i17RV-9909BLK 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black Matte
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I picked up this laptop to replace my old ThinkPad T42. Any machine running Windows XP beyond April of 2014 will be a security nightmare, so it's good to update now. Plus the ThinkPad ran too slow for most modern software, and little tasks were a pain to execute.What I liked most about the ThinkPad was its sturdy construction. It could be dropped, bumped, and even sat on without any noticeable markings on the outside. Most of the laptops I've seen look dirty with something as insignificant as a fingerprint. That's what interested me in this Dell Inspiron; its shell is wrought so it can take more of a beating. Plus the textured surface easily hides marks. The only thing I noticed was a darkening in areas where I touched it with oily hands, but that can be easily wiped off.
Next is the performance. Getting an i5 for this price range is amazing. It's one of the best processors out there. The negative is that it's only 1.8 GHz; fast enough for everyday tasks, but a bit slow for gaming. I would not recommend this as a gaming laptop even though it's a 17" with a 10-key number pad. Sure, basic games are fine, but don't expect to get into intensive FPS with topped out graphics. 6GB of memory is decent, but the 5400 rpm hard drive is a bit slow (takes programs longer to load into memory, including Windows bootup). My plan was to swap out the drive for a Solid State Drive (SSD), but there's one big problem with that. And that leads up to my next section.
Software.
The laptop comes with a copy of Windows 8, the latest in Microsoft's long line of OS builds. At first, I found it a bit awkward compared to Windows 7. My wife kept getting frustrated when she'd be in one window, and then suddenly it would disappear and another would open in its place. After doing some digging on Google, I discovered that the track pad used something called App switching. Basically, whenever my wife would inadvertently swipe from left to right, it would switch back to her previously used program. After I disabled this in the settings, Windows 8 became a lot easier to use.
Here's the settings:
1. Press the Windows Logo+I keys together and a menu will pop-up in the right-hand side.
2. Click on Change PC settings option.
3. Head to General tab and then turn the "Allow switching between recent apps" slider OFF.
4. Also, disable "When I swipe from the left edge, switch directly to my most recent app."
Now back to my original point. Why I couldn't install my Solid State Drive like I had planned. The laptop does not come with any installation disks. If that wasn't bad enough, there's no sticker on the bottom to give the serial number for Windows 8. So, even if I were to get my hands on a disk, I could not reinstall Windows without that number. This means that your OS is locked to the hard drive that came with the computer. Bad news if your computer crashes and you need to reformat. Of course, Dell gives you the ability to do a factory restore, but what good is that if the drive itself goes bad? My only option for putting in a different hard drive would be to repurchase Windows 8, which isn't a financially smart thing to do. I could always put an older version of Windows on, or even Linux, but part of what you pay for with this laptop is that Win8 license. Seems silly to let it go to waste.
So I decided to keep the slower hard drive that came with it. The drive is not terrible. For the most part, everything loads at a reasonable speed. Plus 5400 rpm will consume less juice from the battery (speaking of which, the battery life is fairly decent--I can get a few hours out of it when streaming video, and more for simpler tasks). Overall, this laptop is night and day when compared to my older and slower ThinkPad T42. It's a great price for a really good system. Just don't plan on having it last forever. Also, you may want to consider the 15" version as this one is a bit of a beast to carry around--but if you keep it on a desk, 17" is fine.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program First of all, you need to know that the texture is not a nice thing. It is basically just there to "gussy up" the surfaces from being too obviously plastic. The actual use of the machine isn't effected by the "texture" but it is very noticeable, and I can't help but think that over time, it would be filled with dirt and dust if not fully cleaned on a regular basis. So keep in mind that the surface of the laptop is a major downer. The touchpad and the keyboard are regular plastic and are fantastic to use.... more on that ...The screen has a good resolution, with poor viewing angles. When looking at it straight on, it is great, but move to the side, or look at it above, and the angles get washed out. If it is an IPS screen, I can't tell it .. I am thinking that it is not an IPS.
Otherwise, the screen is LED backlit and has good colors and a clear picture. It is not a touchscreen and with the bargain price, you would not expect to see one.
The inside processor, memory, and hard drive are all very capable. The machine is fast and can handle anything that you throw at it.
The keyboard is fantastic, with good feel, good travel, and it is very responsive. I love the keyboard! Only downside, is that it is not backlit. So if you work on your computer in the dark, you will need an overhead light or something to help you find the keys ....
Windows 8 is installed, and you can search the Web to find the pros and cons on that OS.
There are plenty of ports and it seems to handle anything you want to plug into it. I am using it as a desktop replacement and I have my Ethernet, a mouse, an iPhone cable, and a printer all hooked in, no problem. It also has a DVD drive to watch movies and to burn dvd's / cd's.
The sound is very good and does a pretty good job at sounding full. I am very comfy watching a movie by myself in front of the laptop (bad viewing angles, not good for more than one person) listening to speech and other sounds. Watching a heavy action flick might pose a challenge with distortion, but during my time with it, it has handled most sound well ...
So to recap:
Pros: Great affordable price tag, very capable processor and memory, good screen resolution, good hard drive space,great keyboard, good sound, lots of ports, and can pack it up and take it with you as needed
Cons: Weird bumpy surface, poor viewing angles, not an SSD, no backlit keyboard, big and heavy for a portable.
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