On the face of it, Apple’s Mac Mini makes most ’small form-factor’ PCs look like a pile of junk. The Mini’s ultra-compact design also makes it ideal for use in an office or as a stylish little media centre in the living room. Evidently, Dell has taken note – hence the appearance of its Inspiron Zino range of compact PCs.
Splits from Atom: Dell’s Inspiron Zino HD
It’s always been surprising that no Windows PC has ever really come along to challenge the Mac Mini – especially given Apple’s creeping price hikes. The Mac Mini is now far from the low-cost Mac that it was originally intended to be, with the cheapest incarnation currently priced at £510. That’s hardly a bargain given that it doesn’t include a monitor, keyboard or mouse.
We’ve seen a few compact ‘nettop’ boxes, such as Acer’s Revo, in recent months, but these have tended to use low-power Atom processors that couldn’t pass muster as a proper Desktop PC. However, Dell’s Zino HD packs a more powerful Desktop processor.
Dell simply describes the Inspiron Zino HD as a “mini Desktop computer” but its design clearly suggests that it’s intended as a living room media centre too. Measuring 195mm square and 85mm high, it’s larger than the 163 x 163 x 50mm Mac Mini. The Zino HD isn’t quite as neatly designed as the Apple, either. The black plastic chassis looks a bit cheap when sitting alongside the silvery metallic trim of the Mac. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Dell’s 2145cn is a mid-range multifunction device, designed for small office and modest workgroup use, but includes several, big-machine functions. Unusually, it’s also built around a colour laser engine.
Dell’s 2145cn: multifunctional with duplex Printing and scanning
There’s only one thing you can be pretty certain of with a Dell printer – it’ll be black. It could come from a variety of sources – Lexmark and Samsung are favourites – and be either good or poor value, but it’ll not have coloured covers. The 2145cn is tall enough to be slightly awkward on the desk, particularly if you add the optional, 500-sheet paper tray.
In fact, you’re probably going to need this, as the machine comes as standard with capacity for only 250 sheets, which is barely enough. Even with the 100-sheet multipurpose tray, which swings down from the front, you’ll still be filling the main tray too often. Read the rest of this entry »
Review A side-effect of Dell’s last internal reorganisation is that the company has separate teams working on very similar products but aimed at different kinds of user. Taking the case in hand, the Latitude 2100 is a netbook aimed at major organisations – primarily educational – who want to buy machines of a predetermined spec in bulk. So it has been designed by a wholly different team from the one responsible for the consumer-oriented Inspiron Mini series.
So, have the Latitude lads and lasses done a better job at making a netbook than the Inspiron crew?
When you lay hands on the 2100, the first thing that strikes you is the textured, rubberised skin that covers both the lid and base of the machine. It’s a unique netbook feature as far as we know and we have to ask why it hasn’t been done before. It ensures that the machine sits very securely on a desk. It also feels more grippy in the hand than the usual slick netbook casings, reducing the chances of it slipping out of the grasp of a careless ankle biter, or a tired and emotional grown-up.
Rubber skin aside, the 2100 is a rather angular machine. You get get the impression the Latitude designers took one look at the Mini 10s curves and thought: ‘Over my dead body… pass me a set square’. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Dell’s cheap and cheerful Mini 10v is a firm favourite here at Vulture Central but some potential customers are doubtless more interested in capability and functionality rather than absolute economy. So, with that in mind, we thought it wise to take a quick gander at the top end of Dell’s netbook offering, the Mini 10 complete with all the trimmings, almost.
Dell’s Inspiron Mini 10
Externally, the only difference between the 10 and the 10v is the flush fitting screen cover. Aesthetically it makes little difference but it does mean that wiping the screen clean is easier so for that reason alone we will count it as an improvement. Everything else – the size, the weight, the keyboard, the daft sticky-out SD card slot, the rather bulbous 6-cell battery housing, the one piece track pad and click bar, the lack of easy access to the memory slot – is identical to the 10v so we won’t bother repeating ourselves, just take a shufti at the 10v write up. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Dell is going big on personalisation with the Studio 15, with five colours and 11 artistic designs available to choose from. If you really want your laptop to stand out from the crowd, then you could opt for one of the colourful finishes from designers such as Mike Ming, Derek Welch, Joseph Amedokpo, Siobhan Gunning or Bruce Mau. This comes at a cost, however, with three colours (lime green, purple and red) adding £29 to the bill and artistic designs an extra £69.
Dell’s Studio 15
There’s also a bewildering array of components to choose from, but this offers the freedom to tweak the spec to suit your needs. The review model came with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor, 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Ram, 320GB 7,200 rpm SATA hard drive, 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics, an internal DVD writer and a six cell battery, all coming in at £719. Adding £100 will get you the Blu-ray reader but if you want to burn Blu-ray discs as well, then £280 will get you the writer.
Going the other way, opt for a 2GHz Pentium Dual Core T4200 CPU, integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD GPU and trim the memory down to 2GB together with a 160GB hard drive, and you’ll shave around £250 off the price tag. Designer options aside, the Studio 15’s wedge shape starts out at 30mm high at the front, rising to 43mm at the rear and it measures 372mm wide by 252mm deep. Tipping the scales at 2.65kg, it’s not the most travel-friendly laptop, but manageable for short excursions. Read the rest of this entry »
