Dell Inspiron 6000

Dell's Inspiron 6000 thin and light notebook lacks many of the innovative features that can be found in competing systems, but for those willing to shop around and do customization it can be a really good bargin.

5/23/05 - Dell has often been a leading in computer sales covering a broad range of products. The new Inspiron 6000 is intended thin and light notebook computer system to fill the need for low cost wide screen notebooks.

Powering the Inspiron 6000 is the Intel Pentium M 715. This is not one of the latest or fastest mobile processors available, but it is sufficient for most computing tasks. It is matched up with 256MB of PC2-3200 DDR 2 memory. It would be nice to see Dell offer 512MB standard with the system.

Storage on the system is very mixed. The hard drive is a fairly small 40GB of storage space, but it does come equipped with a high speed 8x DVD+/-RW burner. Also included is a SD card reader, but most other system now offer multiple format readers.

Graphics are one area that the Inspiron 6000 are definitely above average. The system can come equipped with the ATI Mobility Radeon X300 dedicated graphics processor. This isn't the fastest 3D graphics processor out there, but it does free up system memory and allow for DirectX 9 accelerated graphics. Lower priced versions of the 6000 only come equipped with the Intel GMA integrated graphics.

Software is another area that the Inspiron 6000 could use improvement. Most notebooks come with a productivity suite that covers most of the general applications a user might require. The 6000 instead comes only with the Word Perfect 12 word processing application.