Dell's Inspiron 4150 caters for people who are prepared to sacrifice a certain amount of portability, so long as, in return, they get a well-featured and fast notebook that can handle most applications with ease. Therefore, although this 2.85kg Mobile Pentium 4 system cannot be described as ultraportable, nor is it anything like as bulky and heavy as the 3.5kg-plus Inspiron 8200 series of genuine desktop replacement systems.
Our review sample was based on a 1.9GHz Mobile Pentium 4 processor, along with Intel's 845 chipset and 256MB of DDR SDRAM (expandable to 1GB via two SODIMM sockets). Other models in the range come with Mobile Pentium 4 CPUs running from 1.6GHz up to 2GHz. The 4150 has a 14.1in. TFT display, which can either be a high-resolution SXGA+ (1,400 by 1,050 pixel) unit, as in our review system, or a more conventional — and cheaper — XGA (1,024 by 768 pixel) screen. The display is driven by ATI's Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics accelerator with 32MB of DDR memory.
This is a two-spindle notebook, with a fast 5,400rpm 40GB IBM hard drive and either a floppy or a DVD/CD-RW combo drive in the modular bay. The second front-mounted bay holds the system's 4,400mAh Li-ion dell inspiron 4150 battery.
Dell Inspiron 4100 machine with the following base specs:
Pentium III-M 866 Mhz (166 MHz bus)
256 RAM PC133 SODIMM boards(special double memory promotion)
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB (this option appeared last year for 3 days then has not shown up since… this card competes with the new GeForce4 Go graphic chipsets!)
DVD/CD-RW combo drive DVD 8x and CD-RW 8x/4x/32x
14.1 inch UXGA screen (1600×1200 resolution)
20 GB Hard Drive (4500 rpm)
Windows XP Home
My friend had the following Inspiron 4150 machine:
Pentium 4-M 1.6GHz (400MHz bus)
256 MB DDR PC2100 (266MHz) RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 32MB
DVD/CD-RW combo drive (DVD 8x, CD-RW 24x/10x/24x)
14.1 inch UXGA screen
40 GB Hard Drive (5400 rpm)
Windows XP Home
The Inspiron 4150 battery outperforms my 4100 machine but not by a huge margin as the specification may suggest. If you didn't know any better, the Pentium 4-M specs suggest that it should perform twice as fast as my "wimpy" Inspiron 4100. Don't always take stock from raw numbers.
The 4150 does have alot going for it. The memory is twice as fast, the motherboard speed (bus speed) is 2.5-3 times faster, and there is a faster hard drive to boot over my Inspiron 4100. Unfortunately, the 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M processor is slower in most applications than a 1.2 GHz Pentium III-M processor. Yes, you read that right. The only time the Pentium 4-M outshines the Pentium III-M is if the software was compiled towards the special command sets on the Pentium 4-M processor (P4-M)… then the P4-M really rocks the house. Such software is only just starting to come out now. In actuality, my opening and closing windows and other programs on my Inspiron 4100 lagged by a second or two from my friend's inspiron 4150 series setup. The faster hard drive on the 4150 also helped its performance significantly as well… especially when windows was forced to use hard drive swap space. My lag times could approach a 1/2 minute at times. The faster 266MHz memory (over my 133MHz)probably translates into at most 15+% more speed to the computer. It would not half the time to perform tasks on the computer. My Inspiron 4100 had a better video card (I had 64MB of dedicated video memory) versus the 32MB of video memory on the 4150 setup. This allowed my computer to keep up with the Inspiron 4150 especially in games with large textures (like First Person Shooters - Unreal, Quake, Serious Sam).
Earning a PC WorldBench 4 score of 98, the 4150's speed was among the best we've seen for a 1.8-GHz Pentium 4-M laptop running Windows XP. A ringer for its predecessor, the Inspiron 4100, the 4150 keeps the line's pleasingly trim and sensible design. The 4150 also inherited good battery life; in our tests it lasted just a couple of minutes shy of 3 hours on one charge. The components are easily accessible; the hard drive is held in by only one screw on the bottom of the notebook, and both the modular bay and the dell battery inspiron 4150 bay are located on the front. You can gain the use of a modular bay for an extra battery or hard disk by passing on the standard floppy drive–which carries a $20 value–and opting instead to pay an extra $10 for an 8MB DiskOnKey USB flash-storage device from M-Systems. DiskOnKey plugs directly into the notebook's USB port and requires no drivers when used with Windows Me or later. Unfortunately, Dell's listed price of $30 for the DiskOnKey (as a stand-alone option, rather than a $10 upgrade from the floppy drive) is rather high–competing USB memory drives start at $30 for twice as much storage.The keyboard isn't loaded with shortcut buttons the way most notebooks' are, but it is laid out comfortably and has a spongy yet pleasant feel. Color-conscious consumers can customize the unit and jazz up the palm rests with inserts of different hues and patterns (the cost ranges from $6 to $39 a set).
With its dual pointing devices and modular bay, the Inspiron 4150 would fit well in small to medium-size companies.
