Dell's Celeron Is Quick And Cheap

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday February 2, 1999

By DARREN YATES

THE rash of mobile processors launched in recent weeks has seen most of the major vendors refresh their product lines.

While the new 366MHz Pentium II models remain highly priced, the new 300MHz mobile Celeron processors look to offer a better solution for business.

In the past, cost-effective options often meant taking a severe cut in performance when compared with the latest models. However, Dell's new Inspiron 3500 D300GT looks set to change that. With a price tag of about $4,000, the D300GT performs more like the $7,000 and $8,000 notebooks of six months ago.

Benchmark tests showed this unit to be a real screamer, returning a test score of 16.1. Dell's own 366MHz Pentium II-powered Inspiron 3500 D366GT managed 17.2. This shows how good the D300GT is rather than how slow the 366MHz Pentium II version is.

The unit outperformed Gateway's 366MHz Pentium II-driven Solo 9100XL. Usually a very fast notebook, the 9100XL fell behind the D300GT by 6 per cent, showing there are still many factors in performance.

The 14.1-inch active matrix screen is sharp and evenly lit. It is powered by NeoMagic's MagicMedia 256AV controller with 4Mb of graphics memory.

The test unit came with a whopping 128Mb of system memory, which will have had some affect on our benchmark tests, but is unlikely to be hugely significant. But it will make a big difference to multi-tasking applications.

Dell can supply a unit with our test configuration for about $4,000 - which is better than many of the leading contenders.

The unit does not include combined floppy and CD-ROM drive, although the media bay will accept floppy or CD-ROM drive, optional zip drive or second battery.

The Inspiron 3500 is quite thin. It seems Dell has tried to come up with a notebook that suits most applications, but with one or two compromises.

For extended portable use, you may well need the second battery. Our tests on the D300GT's 48 watt-hour Lithium-ion battery netted us a run-time of 2 hours 5 mins - certainly below three hours obtained on comparable units. The Inspiron 3500 appears to be a fairly thirsty system to run.

In the test unit running our benchmark test software, the underside within half an hour became too hot to place on a lap. Although the unit has a built-in cooling fan, it failed to switch on. It was the second Inspiron 3500 unit in a week (the other was a 366MHz Pentium II-powered version) that exhibited this problem.

The heat is most noticeable on the left-hand side, where the heat-sink (a steel device designed to dissipate heat away from the processor) is located.

I.T. has passed on our findings to Dell and we understand Dell engineers in the US are looking into the problems.

Dell has incorporated Toshiba's new 24X-speed XM-1802B CD-ROM drive into the design. This drive, the first 24X-speed unit we have seen, outperformed every other notebook CD-ROM drive on our CD-ROM benchmark tests with a score of 1210Kb/second.

It compares favourably with Gateway's Solo 9100XL DVD-ROM drive score, 646Kb/second, and the Toshiba's Satellite 4030CDT's 925Kb/second.

As a corporate fleet notebook, it does raise some concerns about the battery life and the heat, but the D300GT is hard to fault on a performance versus dollar cost basis.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The Dell Inspiron 3500 D300GT combines excellent cost-effective performance with a big, bright 14.1-inch screen. It appears part of the cost is lower battery life. Our test unit also produced excessive heat. One of the best performance versus cost notebooks around, though.

I.T. Corporate rating: 7/10 Price: about $4,000 Web: www.dell.com.au