Dell Inspiron 640m

by peg
(Trenton, NJ)

I'm not in love with my laptop. The processing power is great for basic internet use. I also store my pictures and do basic editing on it. So the memory is fine.

It handles Vista fine too, which I got stuck with. Vista really isn't that bad for what I use the computer for either. I knew I'd be keeping the laptop for awhile so I didn't want to get stuck in the past with XP, even though I loved it.

The problem with this laptop is the little things. Granted, I've had it for about 3 years now, so I guess I'm lucky it's still working.

My screen has been loose and floppy for over a year. It flops about an inch when I move the laptop. My battery meter randomly disappears from the toolbar.

When I go into the control panel to make sure the box is still checked that I want the battery meter appearing on the taskbar, it shows "battery meter" as an unchecked box, but in that light gray font that tells you you can't click on it.

Recently I got rid of my cable package so I use my laptop a lot for watching my favorite shows.

I learned how to use my TV as a monitor. I connect the laptop through an S-video cable and have an audio-out wire as well so it plays through the tv speakers.

I wish I had upgraded the video card or something, because the picture quality is terrible when I do this. I'm not expecting it to be HD, but just better than it is. Also, once I turn the laptop back to using its screen, if I close the laptop to have it sleep after that (without restarting), when I reopen it the monitor is black.

I hear the usual sounds I hear when opening it, but the screen is completely black. And because you can't reboot using Ctl+Alt+Del twice on Vista, I'm stuck turning the power off.

All of those little things really add up. Next time I'm saving up and buying a Mac.

Specs:
Intel Core Duo CPU
1.87 ghz
2.0 g ram
32 bit operating system