Review: The Dell 1545 – The Smart Office Laptop

Overview

With the credit crunch looming over us everyday, people want a laptop to offer them as much performance for their pound than ever before.

With Dell laptops appearing in a PCWorld store near you, it has become easier than ever to get your hands on a Dell laptop.

So with an update to their current Inspiron range the Dell Inspiron 1545 hits the laptop scene, we find out whether this budget laptop deserves the title 'budget' or does it offer us a little more than we have come to expect.
Review

Style

Sporting the new Dell coloured designed case from Dell, this laptop comes in a stylish blue colour, however if you prefer it then it also comes in the standard black as well. Touting a 15.6"³ Widescreen, it gives the right amount of screen people are use to on laptops.

Under the bonnet

This laptop comes with the all powerful Intel Core 2 Duo Processor which has boosted Intel’s processor sales through the roof. The model running on this is the low/mid spec version, the T5800 this runs at a 2 GHz exactly but bear in mind this means x2 and that many applications are now being released that support dual cores so you will be getting the benefit of two processors’ speeds rather than one if the software allows it of course but otherwise this will run windows and office application with ease.

The amount of RAM that comes with this laptop is 3GB; which is quite nice in terms of performance, office applications will run on this perfectly, which is what you expect from a budget laptop.

Hard drive wise, this comes with a standard 250GB which is a fair bit of the ‘norm’ on most models on the market. So documents such as Word, Excel etc files will be counted in there thousands if your that way inclined not to mention a fair few other programs as well as the few MP3/AVI files to boot.

Gaming wise this is another definite no no; having being built with a INTEL GMA X4500HD graphics card this laptop by no stretch of the imagination is able to handle the pressures that come with gaming life. The few golden oldies will run-on this but games such as FEAR and CONAN will laugh at you for even attempting to run this, that's if it does not overheat your laptop before the opening menu.

Otherwise this laptop comes with what you will need to work in and out of the office Wi-Fi. The amount of USB ports on this laptop accumulate to three that should give you enough to play around with.

The Gaj-It Verdict

Design 9/10
Usability: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Value: 8/10

We Say

A lot of features are missing from this model, that lowers model of this range have such as Bluetooth and Webcam. But in terms of component spec wise this laptop improves on a lot of things. The key to this laptop is to weigh up if you need those features, or you could just buy off Dell directly and pay extra for those items to be added in.

Technical Specs

• Processor – Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 / 2GHz ( Dual-Core )
• 3 GB (installed) / 4 GB (max) – DDR2 SDRAM – 667 MHz
• 250 GB Disk Drive
• 15.6′ Widescreen
• DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM
• Intel GMA X4500HD
• Bluetooth – No
• Notebook Camera – No
• Wi-Fi – Yes

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