laptop keyboards and batteries knowledge

Dell's designers know moderation, though, and we were happy to see a matte plastic keyboard and frame. Many manufacturers have taken to using glossy plastics even on the keyboards, which is frustrating as the texture isn't as pleasant or comfortable. The matte plastic keyboard takes advantage of the added width required to accommodate a 15.6" 16:9-aspect screen to include a numeric keypad. Overall, the keyboard layout is logical and well thought out, with no real sacrifices made to fit the keypad and dedicated keys for Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down. Dell even includes a dedicated touchpad toggle key between the F12 and Insert keys, but eschewed the Scroll Lock key to do so. The keyboard is comfortable and easy to use, and while flex isn't ideal—the keyboard isn't completely firm—it's nowhere near as bad as many other consumer laptop keyboards are.

While the overall build of the Inspiron 15 is very firm and the use of glossy plastics at least tasteful, Dell's designers seem to have missed the boat in stripping down features to produce a more affordable notebook. As we mentioned before, expandability has taken a massive hit with this model and the cuts Dell made have been cruel ones. The lack of eSATA or FireWire—not even an eSATA/USB combo port—is exacerbated by the missing ExpressCard port. The bottom panel on the unit allows the user to replace the hard drive or memory, but there's just no way to improve connectivity beyond what's there. Likewise, the limited customizability on Dell's website ensures you're stuck with the 15.6" LED-backlit screen's mainstream 1366x768 resolution. Even a matte screen would be a welcome change, especially with the default screen's mediocre viewing angles and poor contrast.

Watching the evolution of Dell's 15-inch Inspiron line is interesting, especially when you look at how the chassis designs have changed over the past couple of years. Gone are the bulky gray-and-white monstrosities in favor of a measure of customizable colors and sleeker, more spartan designs. Crossing paths with this smart design evolution has been the continually rising popularity of Apple's MacBook line and the slimmer form factors of notebooks based on Intel's CULV platform and AMD's Athlon Neo processors. Sony's been able to balance powerful internal hardware with light, stylish builds for a while now, but they've largely been the only game in town. Dell's affordable new Inspiron line seeks to change that, and today we have the Inspiron 1564.

We were able to find a package with 802.11n networking by starting with the $794 package (on sale for $709) and selecting one of the upgraded configurations. The base package has a 500GB HDD compared to the 320GB package we received, but it uses the i3-330M CPU. The $1009 package ($120 on sale) adds a Core i5-430M CPU and BD-ROM along with 802.11n, and the $1039 ($909 on sale) adds a 9-cell battery as well. While none of these upgrades are essential, they're all reasonable choices, but we really do miss the ability to specify our own components. Hopefully Dell will bring that ability back to the 2010 Inspiron line—customization options remain plentiful on other laptops.

Finally, in order to fit everything into what is admittedly a very handsome chassis, Dell seems to have made a few unfortunate cuts to connectivity. There's the bare minimum three USB ports, HDMI and VGA ports for connecting a second monitor or a television, an Ethernet jack, microphone and headphone jacks, and the traditional memory card reader. The omission of FireWire and eSATA ports wouldn't be so painful if Dell hadn't also elected not to include an ExpressCard port. As a result, the Inspiron 15 isn't going to be suitable for even hobbyist level video work since there's no way to connect a video camera to it. With the Inspiron 15, what you see is what you get; end of discussion.

While the low clocks will reduce heat output and improve battery life for the Inspiron 15, it bears mentioning that there's no way to switch to using the integrated graphics built into the Core i5 CPU and thus improve battery life further. This is similar to what we saw with NVIDIA's switchable graphics, which have only been in a few products over the years. As we covered in our Optimus Technology Overview, switchable graphics requires more validation and testing, more motherboard layers, and several multiplexer chips (typically two per video output). Given all of the added work, it's perhaps not too surprising—though it is disappointing—that Dell chose to keep costs down on the Inspiron 15. Less expensive models are available with Intel HD Graphics, for those that don't need a faster GPU.

Rounding out the package is 4GB of DDR3-1066 memory (expandable to 8GB if you're willing to lose the 2GB SO-DIMMs that the system comes with), a 320GB hard drive running at 5400 RPM (a Western Digital Scorpio Blue in our test unit, though we suspect actual hard drives will vary based on Dell's current inventory), and a DVD+/-RW drive. Networking comes courtesy of Dell's Wireless 1397 802.11g network adapter, 10/100 Ethernet, Bluetooth, and an integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. While the memory is bog standard for this market segment, the rest of the components are curiously underpowered for such a monstrous processor. The lack of gigabit Ethernet is disappointing, and the modified configuration utility is a mess.

In the process of reviewing the Inspiron 15, we came across an unfortunate change of heart from Dell: their notebooks just aren't as configurable as they used to be. This may simply be for the initial i3/i5 launch, but at present Inspiron 15 options are very limited. Unlike previous models, you can't individually select memory, hard disk, processor, and graphics—they're all bundled now. Finding the Inspiron 15 with Core i3/i5 on Dell's site is a bit trickier than usual as well—you're more likely to find the older Core 2 based Inspiron 15 models. With a bit of searching we can get to the appropriate models, and at present the Inspiron 1564 has four available models. The configuration we received for review is the highest priced model with a Core i5 CPU and discrete ATI graphics. Add in the Ice Blue chassis and the current price is $979.

Packed into our review unit is Intel's latest and greatest in the form of the Core i5-520M CPU, built on a 32nm process with two physical cores and Hyper-Threading adding two more logical cores. It comes with 3MB of L3 cache and a stock clock of 2.4GHz that ramps up to 2.83GHz using Intel's Turbo Boost technology. Running graphics duty alongside the Core i5 is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 with 512MB of GDDR3 video memory. The 4330 is ATI's slowest dedicated graphics part, commanding 80 shaders (stream processors) at a low 450MHz core clock speed—25% slower than its desktop cousin the Radeon HD 4350. Dell makes up for this by opting for 512MB of GDDR3 running at an effective 1.2GHz, helping mitigate the anemic 64-bit memory bus. The Radeon HD 4330 comes with all the hardware video-acceleration trimmings.

We understand that the Inspiron 15 is meant to be more of a bargain, entry-level laptop, but there's little point in upgrading from the base model Inspiron 1564 with i3-330M (2.13GHz with no Turbo Boost) to the beefier i5-520M. Not only does the added performance go to waste in most cases, but it's also a $270 jump for the CPU upgrade. We suspect Dell shipped us the higher-end model to improve benchmark scores, but frankly it's not worth the cost and we recommend the less expensive Inspiron 15 offerings for general use. If you want a faster CPU, look to the Dell Studio 15 line, which adds the missing eSATA, Firewire, and ExpressCard/34 along with a 1080p LCD and the ability to customize many other areas—or look at HP, Acer, ASUS, Toshiba and others who offer notebooks in the same price range with far more expandability than the Inspiron. Ultimately, the trade-off is going to be how much you want to sacrifice to get a mainstream processor in a fairly slim, lightweight chassis.

HP Pavilion dv7-3000 Keyboard(Color: Black Remark: Ribbon cable included. )
Acer Aspire 6920G Keyboard(Color: Black Remark: Ribbon cable included. )
Gateway MT6916 keyboard(Status: Genuine and new! ;Remark: Ribbon cable included)
Compaq Presario CQ60-216DX keyboard(Status: Genuine and new!;Remark: Ribbon cable included)
HP Pavilion G60-235DX keyboard Black(Status: Genuine and new!;Remark: Ribbon cable included)
Toshiba A55-S306 keyboard(Status: Genuine and new! ;Remark: Ribbon cable included)
Dell NSK-D9001 keyboard(Product Type : Li-ion ;Rating : 11.10V; 4400 mAh)
Gateway MX6446 Keyboard(325.0 x 160.0 x 16.0(mm) Color: Black )