Weighing exactly 4kg when fully equipped for travel, the Inspiron 5000 could be a burden out on the road. However, its weight is also an advantage, as it makes for a sturdy notebook. Typing is particularly comfortable; the unit is strong enough for your arms to rest comfortably on the rest pad without fear of the 14.1in screen toppling when you’re away from a desk.
The Inspiron 5000 has an array of expansion ports: parallel, serial, TV out, audio in/out, PS/2, USB and IR. A port replicator is also available for an additional cost. However, the machine is let down by having only 32M of SDRAM. This compares very poorly with the Sony VAIO PCGXE7 and the Toshiba Tecra 8100 which come with 128M of SDRAM Despite the lack of SDRAM, the Inspiron put in a solid performance in the benchmark tests. Unsurprisingly, its Pentium III 750 processor shared top honours with the Tecra 8100 and Armada M700, and the unit powered through SYS-mark2000 applications.
The 8M ATI Rage Mobility-P graphics card produced excellent graphics at both
the business and the high-end 3D and multimedia levels. It proved itself particularly good at 3D rendering and multimedia functions, so gamers ought to have some fun with it as well.
Like most of the notebooks ‘ reviewed, the Inspiron 5000 comes ‘ with a DVD-ROM drive, which pro-‘ vided excellent overall DVD playback. I It was the obvious winner in the overall Video2000 category, with a dear lead over nearest rival, the Tecra 8100.
Like the Sony VAIO PCGXE7, the Inspiron 5000 does not have a power management function such as Speed-Step, but it doesn’t do too badly without it. Its battery lasted three hours and 17 minutes — the same result that the Tecra achieved with the aid of low-power SpeedStep.

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