Dell Inspiron 1545 Comments

An overly harsh review score in my opinion. I bought one of these about two weeks ago and it's a solid machine, doesn't feel like a budget laptop at all, looks stylish, has a good keyboard, wireless is superb, it has a great spec, runs like a dream and represents INSANE value for money. This is an excellent budget laptop. Battery life just isn't an issue for me at all as there are several power profiles that are capable of delivering extended usage. (The default profile on mine was 'high performance' and I changed it immediately.)

I've recommended this notebook to a friend of mine as he is looking for a cheap 15 incher for the usual computing.

The issues you mention: lack of draft N, and bluetooth are not issues for us because we can specify them in the notebook on dell.ca. As well as a six or nine cell battery.

So I'm wondering, with those negatives not being an issue, would it still be a good buy for him Ardjuna?

I personally hate gloss, but he seems indifferent.

@ Ardjuna - No need to be defensive mate, I'm simply offering some user feedback and it's 100% valid. I maintain that for the casual buyer (probably the target audience for this product?) this is great value for money. HDMi output and bluetooth really isn't important for me at all. (Nor would it be a deal-breaker for anyone interested in a £400 laptop.) To my mind, the wifi is good because it works better than any of the other laptops in the household. It may not be the latest profile of wifi, but again, that really doesn't matter to me. What DOES matter is that it works with my wifi at home and the office seamlessly, keeps a strong signal nearly all the time and it's very easy to manage new connections etc. Value wise, I would fully expect you to know of a trendy corner of the internet where it's possible to get a better deal. (There's ALWAYS a better deal somewhere, unfortunately.) But again, I would argue that the casual buyer (AKA me and many others!) will visit PC World, Currys and Comet. Presently, this is the best value laptop you can buy from those outlets, in my opinion. PS- Liked the review, I'm just challenging the overall score :)

I've had mine since 3rd January. All this fuss over the shiny finish! Use an anti static cloth, or carefuly apply silicone furniture polish--problem solved. I'd like HDMI bluetooth and a few other features, but Dell have put the emphasis on quality electronics in the basic product and there is certainly an advance here on the 1525. Many competitors in this class still use Pentium processors. The customers appreciate this. In 80 reviews here a couple mention the limited features, nearly all are lavish in praise of the actual perfomance. Owners, of course, usually 'overrate' their purchases, but to my mind the features issue is bearing heavily on your rating of performance. Mine cost me £399 for 3Gb Ram and 250 hard drive. I could not better that for the money. You mention to McPlopp additional freatures costing 'only £34' more--but today £34 is a lot of money in the Budget computer field!

i feel that this review is to critical because if you were to buy the specification that is reviewd from the dell website it would be much cheaper and thus better value for money i currently have one of these on order and feel that the specification is great value for money £369 plus £29.00 for the coulor upgrade

It's interesting to know that battery life has a two point influence on your 'performance' score, which is quite a lot. I hope Dell will do something about this-a 6 cell battery is clearly required as standard and would give at least a genuine 2.5 hours. However, although very many reviewers mention this it does not prevent them giving the 1545 an 8 or 9 rating. Fact is, very few 15.6+ widescreen laptops will ever be more than a few feet from a powerpoint. And I have booked the night out you recommend I take--it'll probably cost all of that £34!!

The one I bought from Tesco has a webcam, but the sacrifice is for Vista Basic instead of Premium. A small price to pay. I would like HDMI and bluetooth, but not a deal breaker. £400 means that this little gadget is good value for money. I agree with your glossy points, but the spec led me down this path.

Hi there.. Thanks for a helpful and well-written review of the Inspiron 1545, but I can't help feeling that time have changed with regards to what Dell offers.. the latest machines on offer give you the options of adding much higher-spec pieces of kit. I know that reviewing Dells is nigh-on impossible since they're so customisable (as if that were a BAD thing!!) but I was wondering if you'd reappraise in a paragraph or so the latest incarnation of the Inspiron 1545. Specifically:

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=n0454508&c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1

Because in my opinion an P8600 Processor, Free 2 Yr Warranty, 1.3m Webcam, cheap screen upgrade, 4MB Ram, Late-ish discrete ATI Mobility GPU, and Blu-ray for 670 make this a serious contender for Low-Mid-Price buyers, as well as adding a couple points to each rating...

What do you think? How does it compare to non-"entry-level" notebook such as a Studio 15?

Thanks (in advance) for your time...

I bought a dell inspiron 1545@ xmas since then it freezes & has to be turned off with the on/off button,it doesnt recognise all dvd's, the battery life sucks, cant even watch a dvd on battery power, my dock freezes & the dropdown menu doesnt appear, the screen goes black & wont recover. am sick of calling dell @ my expense & going back to original factory settings........help plse ps i wont buy another one

I'm a current Dell Inspiron owner but after about 4/5 years mine no longer seems want to connect to the internet has become extremely slow and has lost the 'w' key since my little boy picked it off! I was just going to purchase the latest version but having read your somewhat mixed reviews I was wondering if anyone can give me a list of good alternatives in a similar price range (I have until today to purchase at the discounted £379 price). Please note I only use my laptop for internet shopping and photos/music pretty much so lack of webcams and extras isn't a must.

Thanks for your very helpful review. I thought the short battery life of my Inspiron 1545 was a defect, and it turns out it really isn't, unfortunately.

I got the 1545 from PCWorld in Mid May and found the following - paid £389.99.

Bad News : It is a Intel T4800 processor, the glossy black is a pain but worse of all there is no HDD use light !

Good News : Comes with a 320Gb HDD, Comes with bluetooth.

The OK news : battery life is poor - I get just over 2 hours watching a movie and slightly more browsing with a 70% dimmed screen.

Bought a 9 cell Dell battery for £69.99 and managed to get nearly 7 hours of life with light use, 70% dimemd screen and in Power saver mode. This battery makes the Laptop much heavier but because of the design provides a back "leg" so it sits really well with the battery in.

Very pleased with it and handles Office 2007, MS Project and MS Visio easily.

I am currently looking for a new laptop, my current one a Compaq Presario C500 i brought for £349 from PC World 1 1/2 yeas ago, both hinges have snapped which has annoyed me.

My Dad who gets a business laptop has a dell and allways had, i think its an Precision M20 or somthing, and has been used in industrial enviroments and has lasted and worked better then mine.

The Inspiron 1545 is the laptop i am going to buy, from the dell website which they have a deal on for £349 and is sooo much better then my current one now. Battery doesnt bother me as it is allways plugged in and if its not it is only unplugged for 30-40 mins max, bluetooth isnt a problem either ok its nice to have built in but i allready have a bluetooth dongle, as for the webcam as well it would be nice built in but i have a external one ready to go. Wireless is never a problem as long as it connects to the router and stays connected. Thank you for this review.

I just got the dell inspiron 1545 as a graduation present and i love it. It works very well and it is great for school. i love that it has vista which i think is very easy to use. also it connects to my wireless internet a lot quicker than our other laptop. overall i think this is a great laptop and it was a great price!

I purchased my laptop in April. From the outset there were problems. For no reason the computer shutdown even with the sleep mode settings correctly adjusted. The shutdown always occurred while typing emails etc. Dell downloaded new drivers, but this didn't rectify it. They sent an engineer out who replaced the motherboard. This didn't work. The computer was sent away and they just put another motherboard in. You can imagine by now I was getting angry and they agreed to replace it with a new one. This they did on June 16th
The second computer does exactly the same. It just shuts down while typing. Dell have offered me a refund. There is something clearly wrong with this model for two computers to shut down repeatedly. The Dell support is poor and frankly a disgrace. Why can they not offer a solution? I would never buy a computer from Dell again, a total waste of my time and hours spent waiting for delivery and return and on the phone. I am one very unhappy customer.

If you are thinking of ordering something from Dell there are a few things to keep in mind. Search the internet for coupon codes. Call Dell and ask about discounts. I order by phone and get better deals than I could have on the internet. Ask about deals on comparable models with similar or better components. I think you get better deals when you order over the phone because I negotiate with them. Shop around, be an informed consumer.

well, the review was spot on but pretty negative. there's a lot of good in this unit. i like the feel and look of the piano wrist rest. sure, i wipe it off everytime i use it, so what? the keys have a great feel, better than most laptops. the colors on the screen are outstanding. no, this is not a gamer's unit and doesn't hide the fact. i think vista is aesthetically cool and have enjoyed using it so far. i bought it to replace an old desktop and could care less about the battery life, which does suck, but it rarely leaves my desk, and when it does, i plug it in. the review did not accentuate the innerds of this thing. this unit is outstanding for the average schmo who looks at facebook, writes papers, checks email, surfs the internet. i have used SPSS on this for statistical analyses and it doesn't break a sweat. movies run great, and who cares about the speakers, i have 2.1 bose speakers hooked up anyway. all in all, quit nit picking and give it a look. it's a mid level book for a great price. should have a webcam, but i don't care about that either.

i just ordered a dell inspiron 1545 i upgraded almost everything even the battery like it is 9 cell now do you know how long it would last

My Dell Inspiron 1545 was bought for me for my Birthday on the 4th of September. I think it is a very handsome Laptop, the shiny finish is very attractive and ease of use is excellent. I was dissapointed and a bit worried after reading these reviews, i havnt had any problems as of late, except for poor battery life which doesnt really matter to me. I was pleasently surpirsed by Windows Vista as i had been told it isnt as good a XP but i found it really organised and easy to use, the toolbars are very handy. I havnt had any problems with connecting to the internet yet. So far i think it was worth every penny and im very very pleased with it, but then that could just be because Ive never had a laptop before and havnt been on a higher spec laptop who knows. so all in all i think Dell have done a great job, does anyone know if the customer service is good standard incase anything does happen to go wrong with it, as i have a 3 year warrenty. Kischa

So, I ordered this online wanted to get a colorful one besides the black. No, didn't happened didn't want to pay $40 dollars just to get it purple or put a design on it. I chose the back to school deal. Yes, a student like me is on a budget and was hoping to pay less than $555. The back to school advertisement is so misleading to me in so many ways... I thought I would get all the MS programs on here for the price I paid, but got a 60 day trial to use them. I mean I was expecting the whole package that would be useful for me to use for educational purposes besides browsing online. This is my second week with the laptop and I am already noticng the flaws as I type... the keyboard is so retarded I like type lightly like I do with a Mac laptop. But with this one, I have to pound on it, hit the keys hard enough to get the letters to appear on the screen, which I have to hit them 2-3 times to get it to work. The space bar sucks too. Also through the ordering process where you can add on things I clicked on most of them but someone managed to have lo jack and a data safe crap dude like I know what that is to even add it. So of course that price added on to my bill. I called customer service to take it out, but since the call center is in India then I should just hang up cause the person on the other end didn't understand my problem, a problem I feel could have been easily fixed by pulling my info and deleting some things. The dell people told me to cancel my order to redo it again, yeah like I wanted to be charged twice for a laptop and you know how that goes it takes weeks before they even refund the money into your account. F'it I says I'll sacrifice $100 I could easily spend on shoes for some stupid program and its not even MS! Oh yeah laptop can easily get scratched, the cheap cover needs a plastic casing. Good thing it is black you can hardly tell unless u look close. The glossy border gets dirty with dust and finger prints easily too.

The webcam options are fun and connection to wireless is good.

@Ardjuna: I was planning on buying this laptop until I read your review. Can you recommend an alternative that has a spec as good as this, is reasonably priced, but has the extras that you believe it needs - bluetooth, webcam, etc. I am totally clueless about laptops and really don't know what I am doing so I would be very grateful for your help! However, the one I found does appear to have a built in webcam - has the model been updated since your review?
Many thanks.

I purchased one of these for my daughter about 6 months ago, since than it has had it's hard drive replaced, had many Vista problems, and now the power supply won't charge, Dell says it's the motherboard... I just wanted to let people know how my experience is going. Maybe i just got a bad seed, but it has been a major headache!!

I won my Inspiron 1545 in a contest at school. Overall its a nice looking computer, but not exactly my favorite computer in the world. It came with Vista Basic, and that in itself was a downer. I personally don't like vista, because it's slower and comes with too many things preinstalled. Personally I dont like the gloss finish, yeah it looks nice, but it attracts fingerprints like none other. haha. I like the keyboard setup and the size, but i have had a problem with it clicking buttons i don't touch, whether it be the ctrl key, or the mouse buttons, and sometimes while typing, it opens new web browsers, clears text, or closes out of programs which is frusterating. After having the laptop for 3 months the AC adapter quit out on me, my laptop doesn't reconigze its own battery adapter, and had to change to an older dell power adapter. I love the size of the screen, and really enjoy the widescreen look. It seems like a smaller laptop, but really has a beastly weight. I was hoping to upgrade some stuff on it from RAM to processor to video card, and was really disheartening to find that the video card cannot be upgraded. I'm a gamer who can't afford a nicer computer haha. All in all, this computer is great for internet, and sometimes typing, on a good day =] Its much faster now that i run Windows 7 RC, and can't wait until the full version comes out. This computer is very nice for older games. Warcraft, World Of Warcraft(Not old, but still, it runs quite nicely)Battlefield 2(Quite suprisingly, i can run that on high graphics), Oblivion(On lower then low graphics). It runs most games, but sometimes it needs a little help, from editing game data =] haha. Hope my review was somewhat helpful =]

I bought this laptop essentially because of the customizable properties it has when its purchased direct from the Dell website. I wanted a blue one but I wasn't prepared to pay an extra 30 dollars just for a different colour... this makes little sense to me because it costs them no extra to make it blue (or so i'd imagine). I'm on a student's budget and this laptop represented best value for money throughout the various laptops I researched before purchasing.
Its an absolutely gorgeous computer despite the fingerprinty nature of the sexy glossy surfaces.
Mine ships with Vista home premium, which is a crappy operating system anyway in my opinion, but it was eligible for a free windows 7 upgrade, which I think is great because there's nothing worse than buying something new and then having it be outdated within months. Its also an attempt from Microsoft to maintain sales deals with computer manufacturers.
Its gonna cost a hefty 100 dollars extra for a dedicated graphics option, and even then its no gaming laptop. My version obviously shipped with the X4500HD Intel Integrated Graphics Accelerator, which is reviewed to be a more powerful integrated graphics accelerator.

3 gig of DDR2 ram comes standard, but in my opinion the upgrade from the standard Celeron 900 2ghz single core processor is probably the only truly "necessary" upgrade from the baseline options.

I like the fact it gives you the options for enhanced customer support or none at all, saving you money, or costing it. I chose to have no customer support because I know my way around well enough not to rely on customer support, even though Dell's support is supposed to have a reputation as one of the best.

Its a beautiful laptop and I think the reveiw is a little bit harsh... its not the best choice, sure. but its what you make of it and no matter what you're getting a great little computer.

hi, i was just gifted this laptop for my birthday. its barely a day old and the scrollers already giving me problems. i did not know untill discovering it the hard way that it doesnt have an integrated bluetooth and no webcam was a huge dissapointment. i have never owned a laptop before so i want to know if apart from these problems i am to expect any more in the future? (i am used to laptops at work from hp and acer which have about the same battery life.)
also, if i need to use an external webcam can u suggest any tht will be compatible with no problems? plus has anyone tried to use linux on this?