Dell Inspiron 2650

A combination DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive is the highlight in the Inspiron 2650, a mainstream notebook for consumers and small businesses.
Our review model's 256MB of RAM was installed in the form of two DIMMs, which left no memory slots open; to add more memory, you'd have to replace one of the DIMMS. It costs $100 more to order this notebook with a single 256MB DIMM that leaves a slot open. The battery life of 2 hours, 18 minutes in our tests was strictly average.
Aside from its combo drive, the 2650 is a plain, simply designed, all-in-one notebook with a monochromatic case. You get some connections, including a parallel port, a VGA port, and headphone and microphone jacks. But don't look for FireWire, built-in wireless, or even the now-common TV-out port. There's no serial port, either, and you get just one PC Card slot, which will stymie some peripherals junkies. The speakers don't sound bad, but there are no external audio controls, and the headphones jack is located on the far left side, an inconvenient spot. Graceful touches include a raised frame around the combo drive's eject button, which makes the button easier to find, and a gauge on the battery pack for checking remaining power without turning on the notebook. Need to share? It's easy to pull the 2650's hard drive out of the front of the case for swapping, once you've removed a small screw on the bottom. Equipped with a 1.6-GHz Pentium 4-M chip, the 2650 turned in a decent PC WorldBench score of 98. That's slower than some notebooks with the older 1.2-GHz Pentium PIII-M processor, but about average for the mobile version of Intel's Pentium 4. Dell provides around-the-clock telephone support for the 2650, but calls aren't toll-free and you get little print documentation.
Though fairly priced for a notebook with a 14.1-inch screen and a 1.6-GHz Pentium 4-M processor, the $1947 Inspiron 2650 lacks the extras most consumers have come to expect. Dell fans might bite, but others should keep looking.

Buying Information

Dell Inspiron 2650
PC WorldBench 4 score of 98, 1.6-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M CPU, 256MB of 266-MHz DDR SDRAM, 512KB L2 cache, Windows XP Home, 14.1-inch active-matrix screen, NVidia GeForce2 Go graphics with 16MB of DDR SDRAM, 30GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM and 8X/8X/24X CD-RW combination drive, built-in V.92 modem and network adapter, touchpad pointing device, 8.3 pounds (including AC adapter and phone cord); Microsoft Works 2002. One-year parts and labor warranty, free unlimited 24-hour daily toll-call tech support.
$ 1829
PC WorldBench 4 score of 98, 1.6-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M CPU, 256MB of 266-MHz DDR SDRAM, 512KB L2 cache, Windows XP Home, 14.1-inch active-matrix screen, NVidia GeForce2 Go graphics with 16MB of DDR SDRAM, 30GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM and 8X/8X/24X CD-RW combination drive, built-in V.92 modem and network adapter, touchpad pointing device, 8.3 pounds (including AC adapter and phone cord); Microsoft Works 2002. One-year parts and labor warranty, free unlimited 24-hour daily toll-call tech support.

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