An excellent value

This laptop has been the recipient of some unfairly harsh reviews in the press and online.

It is a budget laptop, no doubt about that. However, with a dual core processor and 2GB of RAM, this machine is more powerful than the desktops that many businesses still rely on as their "bread and butter." In fact, although the Inspiron 1501 has been discontinued, Dell sells a laptop under the "Vostro" business line with roughly the same configuration.

It's reasonably fast running Vista Home Premium (mine has an Athlon 64 X2 dual core), and the 15.4" WXGA TrueLife screen is one of the best that I have seen on a laptop. Great contrast, excellent colors and it's easy on the eyes. The built-in sound is better than average, and it features a CD/DVD RW combo drive, card reader, USB 2.0 ports, and a VGA out. Great for productivity apps AND multimedia.

It handles everything that I can think of to throw at it - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, financial software (Peachtree and Quickbooks), a C compiler, and even World of Warcraft.

Best part of this deal is that you can buy one that is "certified reconditioned" trough Dell, with the same standard warranty as a new laptop, for about 400 dollars.