Expiring Tonight! Dell Home: Inspiron 600m Centrino 1.3GHz 384MB 30GB DVD/CDRW 802.11 $1009 AR w/ free shipping

bit · Apr 17, 2003

Update: there is a 10% off $999 coupon on systems for 4/22 only, use it to save more! Final price on the 600m is $1399 - 10% coupon - $250 rebate = $1009.

Update 4/22: 2 day only Dell coupon code is back. Exp 4/23.

$75 off $750+ Desktop
$100 off $1000+ Notebook

Thin and light w/ extended battery life, uses new intel Centrino mobile processor. only 5lb, 1.29" thin. Pentium-M 1.3GHz performs close to the P4-M 2.4GHz?

Loaded hot laptop deal. Dell Home has the New Inspiron 600m notebook w/ Pentium-M 1.3GHz, 32MB video, 14.1" screen, Free 384MB DDR upgrade, 30GB upgrade, free DVD/CD-RW combo upgrade, integrated wireless LAN, Modem/NIC, XP Home for $1399 - $100 dell coupon - $250 rebate = $1049 w/ free shipping. No tax for most states.

Inspiron 500m notebook w/ Pentium-M 1.3GHz, 14.1" screen, free 256MB DDR upgrade, 20GB, free DVD or 24x CD-RW upgrade, Modem/NIC, XP Home for $1199 - $100 dell coupon - $150 rebate = $949 w/ free shipping

jasonja · Apr 17, 2003

free 2568MB DDR upgrade

w0w

neovan · Apr 17, 2003

can you point me to a review of the centrino and its "close" performance to the 2.4Ghz chip?

reason i'm asking is that i just bought the inspiron 5100 and its a few lbs heavier, i might cancel and get this instead.

TIA

jasonja · Apr 17, 2003

search the major places for reviews (Tom's, Anandtech, Google).. in general is seems like a Pentium M is comparible to a p4 M that is 500Mhz-600Mhz faster than it. So a 1.6 M is on par with a 2.2 P4M.

Battery life is much better in some cases too.

gja88 · Apr 17, 2003

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/index.html

Check out the 2 articles dated March 12th.

slycat · Apr 17, 2003

i really want this but $1k is still a little rich for me..

oaaltone · Apr 17, 2003

I just ordered this laptop last week for about the same with some different coupons and another rebate. I wrote up a little review:

Speed: Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the laptop. Coming from a very comparable, 6 month old laptop (Inspiron 4150SE/1.7GHz P4-M/512MB DDR/40GB IBM 40GNX/Radeon 7500 16MB/CD-RW-DVD Combo/TrueMobile 1150 WiFi/14.1" XGA), the speed increase is noticible, even though the 4150 has 2x the RAM, more clock speed, and a much faster hard drive. Quite surprising!

OS: I've been running XP Pro SP1 on the 600m for now, having formatted the drive into 2 10GB partitions, and XP runs very nicely. The newness of the hardware was apparent, as XP needed a surprising amount of drivers, whereas most of the time, XPs default driver database handles the task well. Nonetheless, Dell's website supplied all the latest drivers without any problems. I'm installing RedHat 9 on the other partition as I type this. The default graphical install doesn't work, but a text install seems to work fine, but RedHat 9 installed successfully in text mode with default settings. Performance in Gnome is quite snappy, but I haven't had much time to do much yet. The only thing I noticed right off the bat was that there are no drivers available for the Intel WiFi.

Screen: The clarity is amazing. The text is quite small, but not bothersome to me, even though I don't have the best eyesight in the world.

Noise: Incredibly quiet. You have to practically put your ear to the laptop to hear it. The CDRW/DVD Combo drive, however, makes rather strange seeking noises. Sort of like a mouse chirping, or something like that... wierd, but not annoying. As far as the power supply, that makes a wierd noise, which is being discussed here.

Keyboard: I like it, enough tactile feedback for my tastes. (I'm opposed to mushy keyboards with little or no feedback.) The layout is the same as the Dell Inspiron 4150 that I'm used to.

Speakers: Generic laptop speakers, don't expect aural ecstasy, but not terrible. I regularly use a nice pair of headphones, and when I'm not, I mute the audio anyways.

Build Quality: The case, plastic with a metallic look to it, is very sturdy feeling compared to the other laptops I've owned. The screen is a little "bouncy"... springs back and forth for a second after you've adjusted it. Hard to explain, but no big deal. The latching mechanism is much better than that on my 4150.

Battery: Not yet tested... will do that later and update this post.

Network: Havnen't tested the gigabit wired NIC yet. I have the Intel MiniPCI card, and it works well. The Intel WiFi utlity for XP is very nice, has an option to automatically connect through a VPN client, and it works with the Cisco client I need for wireless at school. The signal strength seems on par with my TrueMobile 1150. The connection has dropped 2 times, but I believe my router is at fault, as this happens with the TrueMobile as well.

I've also put some pictures in a gallery on my site for the curious. If you'd like a picture of something specific, let me know and I'll add it when I get a chance.

jasonja · Apr 17, 2003

olliebg,

Thanks for the pictures.. debating on getting one of these myself and I appreciate those who are giving folks like me more pictures and feedback.

Warders23 · Apr 17, 2003

thanks for the review... maybe this will be the laptop i'm going to get... might be too good a deal to pass up

oldfoof · Apr 17, 2003

Can Canadian's get in on this deal ?

Jenova314 · Apr 17, 2003

olliebg:

does the laptop have usb2.0?

bit · Apr 17, 2003

Originally posted by: Jenova314
olliebg:

does the laptop have usb2.0?

2 USB2.0 port according to dell:

http://www.dell.com/us/en/dhs/products/model_inspn_3_inspn_600m.htm#tabtop

Jenova314 · Apr 17, 2003

Originally posted by: bit

Originally posted by: Jenova314
olliebg:

does the laptop have usb2.0?

Click to expand...

2 USB2.0 port according to dell:

http://www.dell.com/us/en/dhs/products/model_inspn_3_inspn_600m.htm#tabtop

ok i hope they unintentionally left out the firewire ports...

oaaltone · Apr 17, 2003

There are no firewire ports. There are good pictures of the ports here.

Xab · Apr 17, 2003

I can't get the $250 and $100 coupons to tack on, where do I go for that?

gleong · Apr 18, 2003

Oh man, this is tempting...

Xab, the $250 is a mail in rebate rebate, not a coupon. As for the $100 coupon, search some coupon sites for it...

telstar1 · Apr 18, 2003

Thanks for the review. Based on the photo here the case looks shiny. What's the look/feel of the case?

Thanks,
Telstar

oaaltone · Apr 18, 2003

Originally posted by: telstar1
Thanks for the review. Based on the photo here the case looks shiny. What's the look/feel of the case?

Thanks,
Telstar

The case is really sharp looking. It's a silver-metallic plastic. The silver, aviator-style Dell logo seems to be some sort of metal, quite nice looking as well. While I don't particulary care for the blue inserts in the keyboard, it is not as ugly as I thought.

The case feels very solid, probably due to the fact that some new alloy frame is being used in the new Dells. While some are compaining about the flimsiness of the lid, I think it's about the same as every other laptop I've ever used. Not too sturdy, not too flimsy.

I've received quite a few comments on the looks already, all of them positive.

Jenova314 · Apr 18, 2003

Originally posted by: olliebg
There are no firewire ports. There are good pictures of the ports here.

how can they not have firewire, sheesh... i would've jumped at this... i need both firewire and usb2 w/o having to use the expansion slot.

jvisaria · Apr 18, 2003

i am doing something wrong here...

i cant seem to configure the 600m down to 1399... lowest i can get it is 1588.

where am i going wrong? anyone else having this problem?

edit: NM.. i AM stupid.

MuthaFaker · Apr 18, 2003

How is this compare to the 5100?? ANy idea? I got the 5100 last week and plan on returning it and get this....Any suggestion?

Soybomb · Apr 18, 2003

So those of you with it, what do you think of the build quality? This http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=51&threadid=1026340 makes me think twice about ordering but it seems like a pretty sweet deal........

jvisaria · Apr 18, 2003

people will always complain about stuff.... you can always return it.

I went ahead and ordered mine -- this was exactly what i was looking for as far as performance/features/price.

oaaltone · Apr 18, 2003

Originally posted by: Soybomb
So those of you with it, what do you think of the build quality? This http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=51&threadid=1026340 makes me think twice about ordering but it seems like a pretty sweet deal........

I really don't find the build quality that poor, compared to the previous laptops I've owned. My general thought is that it's a computer, so I should be careful with it. If you're not careless, you shouldn't run into any problems. If you want to whip the lid back and forth and bend the screen, go for it. Overall, I'm quite satisfied.

On another note, I've whipped up some quick, under-construction guides on how to do clean installations of XP and RedHat 9. I'll add to them over time as I get a chance to fool around with the laptop some more. The guides are here:
http://www.aaltonen.us/600m_xp.html
http://www.aaltonen.us/600m_rh9.html

larciel · Apr 18, 2003

$250 MIR states when purchased at "REGULAR PRICE" ...

Expiring Tonight! Dell Home: Inspiron 600m Centrino 1.3GHz 384MB 30GB DVD/CDRW 802.11 $1009 AR w/ free shipping

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