Is Dell Vostro 1500 a good laptop for personal use? Does it last long?

Here is the deal that caught my attention.


Dell Small Business offers the Dell Vostro 1500 Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4GHz 15" Widescreen Notebook for $599 with free shipping. That's the lowest total price we could find for this configuration. Sales tax is added where applicable. Features include an Intel Core 2 Duo T5270 1.4GHz dual-core processor, 15.4" 1280x800 widescreen LCD, 3GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, DVD burner, 802.11g wireless, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS 128MB video card, and Windows Vista Home Basic or XP Home





This price is very cheap compared to other brand laptops with the same configuration. Please respond only if you are familiar with Vostro. Thank you very much!
Is Dell Vostro 1500 a good laptop for personal use? Does it last long?
I own Vostro 1400. I don't have any problems with that. vostro is pretty heavy since it's designed for small business use.
Is Dell Vostro 1500 a good laptop for personal use? Does it last long?
I have a Dell Vostro 1500 for around 7 months now. It is not my primary computer, but I do still use it often. Mine came with 2 GB of ram, a 120 GB hard drive. Other than those differences, mine has the same specifications as yours. I really like it, but I want to point out a couple things. When I ordered mine, different variations of the display were available. I went with the TrueLife WXGA display. While it is not bad, it is not the best either. I learned that I don't like the glossy screen used on the TrueLife display (although that is personal preference... some people love glossy LCD's and some hate them). Also, while every LCD screen I have ever used doesn't always display dark blacks or contrast dark colors perfectly, I noticed it was a bit more obvious this laptop display than my old laptop. However, I am not sure if using the WXGA+ or the WXGA monitor without TrueLife would change this or not. But do not take this as me saying the display is awful or un-usable. I am just saying I have used better.





When I got it, it had Vista Home basic installed, but it also had some type of dell media software that let you watch video/dvd's and play music on your computer without fully booting into windows. This is supposed to save battery life and be quicker than fully booting windows. However, to install this software at the company, they install the media software on its own partition. This makes it difficult to get rid of, if you don't want it and it also means that if you reinstall windows, you have to set it up before installing windows, if you want to get the paritition table write. While I could see how the software could be useful to some, especially while traveling, it was not useful to me. Also, it is based off Windows Media Player, so it only played formats supported by that.





The system has been extremely stable and has worked well for me. It did not come with a lot of annoying crapware or demo software that you have to install (unlike many other brands). I primarily use it for web browsing and programming, but I have done some light gaming on it. It is an excellent value and I would definitely get another Vostro 1500 if I needed another laptop. It has held up well, and the only thing that has changed is a couple of the labels on the bottom are starting to wear. Otherwise, I do not see any signs of wear or damage.

lilac