Sluggish
Written: Oct 12 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: No smoke from the box yet
Cons: Poor video acceleration, slow hard disk, generally underwhelming performance.
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| Andyman's Full Review: Dell Dimension XPS T500 |
I use this computer all day long and I swear it's the only thing standing between me and world domination. I'm amazed to find, year after year, that despite advances in processor technology, PCs running Windows don't get any faster. This Dell is a solid performer, no real complaints, but it's far from the empowering business tool I would expect from its specs.
With a 500MHz PIII, 128MB of RAM, an AGP 2x video card and a 19GB hard drive, you would expect serious performance. Nope. This thing seems slower than the 266MHZ PII I used to use.
I suspect the ATi Xpert is to blame for the sluggish feeling, as windows appear and disappear in slow, choppy lurches, and trying to drag solid windows brings the machine way down. ATi's RAGE may not be the best chipset in the world, but 8MB of video memory out to be enough to run 3 applications on, don't you think?
The hard disk may be good-sized but I spend a lot of time listening to it rattle while the work I'm trying to do is frozen in limbo. I've seen applications hang and then com unstuck before, but rarely because the hard disk has work to do. Perhaps fragmentation is an issue (though I believe its a myth) but with 19GB of space and only 25% in use, fragmentation ought to be at a minimum.
Another irritating peculiarity is that the clock battery on this model cannot be replaced. Now that the battery inside mine is dead, I require constant internet time synch updates to keep my clock from reverting to 20 minutes ago. I can't tell you how embarrassing it was to be 20 minutes late for everything the first week I used this computer at work. This is simply poor design on Dell's part. Undeniably, their bad.
Needless to say, Windows doesn't run spectacularly on much of anything. Perhaps it's poor drivers, perhaps it's software bloat, perhaps it's the fact that 128MB of RAM really isn't enough anymore (what a crime) but let me go on the record here as saying that I am NOT impressed with the XPS-T500 from Dell.
To mitigate my negative comments a bit, I should note that the computer does operate, it slows to a crawl and needs to be restarted daily but it almost never crashes hard. I have yet to really lose any work on it. It's not a 1-star junker, nor a 2-star clunker, but it will take more than the brand name for me to agree with everyone that it is a 5-star wonder.
Recommended:
No
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 401-500
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Andyman
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Member: Andy Hilal
Location: Oakland, CA
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