DELL Inspiron 1720 17″ Widescreen Notebook, 2.0GHz INTEL CORE 2 DUO, WiFi, 3GB RAM, 160GB, CDRW/DVDRW+DL, Webcam, Bluetooth, Windows Vista Home Premium Discount.

DELL Inspiron 1720 17″ Widescreen Notebook, 2.0GHz INTEL CORE 2 DUO, WiFi, 3GB RAM, 160GB, CDRW/DVDRW+DL, Webcam, Bluetooth, Windows Vista Home Premium Description:

As one of the first of the mainstream computer manufacturers to develop a laptop around the new Intel Core Duo processor, Dell has much riding on the success of the new Inspiron 1720. The 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor will either sink or swim in Dells mainstream portables depending upon its reception here. Matched with 3GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 that promises to run even the thirstiest applications with aplomb, the major yardstick is not whether Core 2 Duo can keep pace with the Pentium M (Dothan), but whether it can perform without reducing battery life to minutes rather than hours. Yet having said that, it is easy to think that the Inspirons sole point of interest is the aforementioned CPU. You see, this is Dells attempt at an all-in-one laptop: a workhorse that sits as comfortably in office attire as it does in casuals. With fast-access email buttons, ample memory and a weight of 3.6kg, its a suitable office-based and on-the-go machine. Yet with Media Center bundled in, to give the control buttons at the foot of the casing something to do, and a 17in widescreen display, the Inspiron seems built for handling movies as comfortably as Excel spreadsheets. Visually, the arctic silver and black casing is an interesting reworking from Dell. The colour scheme and layout of the keyboard and tracker pad hint at a classiness that some might dismiss as tacky trend-chasing. But it actually works rather well, giving the screen a comfortable border in gentle silver rather than harsh black.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9967 in Personal Computers
• Brand: Dell
• Model: 1720
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2 unknown-units
• Memory: 3GB DDR2 SDRAM
• Hard Disk: 160GB
• Processors: 1
• Display size: 17.4

Features

• Inspiron 1720 Jet Black Notebook: Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache), Windows Vista Home Premium
• 3GB DDR2 SDRAM 677MHz, 160GB Serial ATA hard drive for large video files
• Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Web Camera, Wireless Internet access 802.11 a/b/g,Bluetooth Wireless Card
• 17 inch WXGA+ TrueLife Glossy Laptop Screen, 8X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability for DVD RW For DVD and CD Burning
• 6 Cell Primary Battery, 90W AC Adapter, Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100

Customer Reviews:

Avoid this like the plague.
I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1720, refurbished, and it has been nothing but trouble since the box was opened. During the “Computer Set-Up” Vista crashed & rebooted the machine. It kept randomly rebooting, without any rhyme or reason: While I was looking at the installed programs; When I tried some of the pre-packaged games (solitaire); When I was online using Windows Explorer; When I was using my Firefox browser. It would restart with multiple programs or a single program running.

The obvious fix was to upgrade to Windows XP. Except that this machine is engineered so that it is not backwards compatible with any OS prior to Vista.

It was even replaced with another refurbished machine which crashed just as frequently and inexplicably.

Then they replaced some of the hardware (CPU & Hard drive) and returned it without reinstalling the operating system or any software. After I did that the computer continued to randomly reboot. Now they want to return to the beginning and make me do their diagnostic work for them instead of making good on their poorly designed machine.

Buy something else instead. There has not been one PC in my possession that has not needed serious effort to get to work at the most basic level, and this machine continues that experience. Save your money & aggravation…buy some other system.

they’re great!
We’ve had one for 2 years -no problems at all, and bought another 3 months ago with Vista, and it works great. It’s vastly over priced here though. Can get it for half that amount.