Are they any good? Just for general use, nothing serious. I’m specifically looking at the 17inch 3000 3793 intel i5, 8gb ram, 512gb ssd. Also considering the 15 5000 5593 with same internal specs as the 17 3000 (it might have a 258gb SSD rather than 512 which is fine for me). The dif between the 3000 and 5000 appears to be the quality of the shell, unless someone can tell me otherwise? It’s the quality of the shells / hardware that I’m most interested in and that the screens are reasonable. I think I’m looking at £530 for the 15 5000 or £650 for the 17 3000 (I prefer 17inch screens)

typing on a Dell Inspiron 17 just now. It’s shit.
Had some serious issues with it that they refused to fix even within 14 months. Had long protracted arguments with them about it and swore never to buy another.

Oh, and the power socket is borked too.

Watching with interest – Mrs C has instructed me to get her a laptop asap. Made the decision to get a separate desktop for me for photo and video editing so the laptop can be a bit more run of the mill.

Keyboard quality also seems important to me – some laptops are awful….

Which specific model is it @thegeneralist

My work laptop is a 15″ 3490.

Honestly, it’s OK, but its dual core CPU is not fit for purpose for what I do for a living. There’s also two small but really annoying features: the touchpad is super-sensitive and clicks for fun even turned right down to its lowest setting (and accidental clicks is just what I need when I’m working with live malware); and Page Up / Page Down / Home / End are Fn-shifted on the cursor cursor keys which absolutely drives me round the bend (though the chicklet keyboard itself ain’t too bad, as chicklet keyboards go). As I’m sure some readers will be quick to affirm I’m a keyboard warrior so text selection and navigation requires a bit of mental gymnastics to work out which combination of ctrl-shift-alt-Fn-arrow I need to press next. I’d recommend factoring in an external keyboard and mouse for any serious work.

Got several. Typing on a 14/5000 (touch screen). Wife is Zooming with Family on another similar, but older model as I type this. A couple of old Inspirons in the office as well.

Never had a problem with any of them, but I don’t use them for serious work. Good old tower PC for that sort of thing. All of them have been customer returns/damaged/scratched from Dells clearance section.

Any views on the Inspiron vs the Vostro series?

Work machine is a core i5 Latitude. Nice build, robust – feels like quality. Slow, screen is average, touchpad does whatever it wants whenever it wants. Intermittent problems with networking.

Not the first dell I’ve had touchpad problems with.

I’m on my third dell laptop at work, in a year and a half. They don’t get moved other than desk to locked drawer at night, or short walk to meeting room. first one was old age to be fair, second one randomly blue screened about 5 times a day. I got really good at saving every 5 minutes… the left hand speaker has failed on my third one after 6 or so months. not the end of the world for a work laptop as I’m usually on headphones in the office, and now I can use my bluetooth speaker. Touchpad seems ok, but then I have proper keyboard and mouse.

The second one I had that randomly Blue screen (and forgot it had a hard drive) was a vostro, current one is inspirion 7000.

I just had to replace my personal laptop and I used the experiences with Dell to buy a HP. Which will probably have similar issues knowing my luck.