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Dell Inspiron 8600 (8600SAP) PC NotebookThe Inspiron 8600 improves upon Dells award winning 15.4" wide-screen Inspiron 8500. The new Inspiron 8600 incorporates Intel®...
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The Inspiron 8600 improves upon Dells award winning 15.4" wide-screen Inspiron 8500. The new Inspiron 8600 incorporates Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology to provide wireless connectivity anywhere wireless access is available and improved battery performance versus its predecessor. The Inspiron 8600s Wide Aspect Display (up to 1920 x 1200 pixels) provides a wonderful panoramic view for side-by-side document viewing or DVD movie watching in the cinematic 16:10 aspect ratio. Experience Nvidias latest graphic imaging with its new 128MB GeForce FX Go5650 4X AGP graphics card option. Finally, the Inspiron 8600 is equipped for all of your home digital needs with the DVD+RW drive option for easy DVD burning. With a DVD+R or DVD+RW disc, you can store up to seven times the capacity of a standard CD!
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39 Reviews from Shopping.com
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Dell 8600 - My Favorite laptop so far.
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Pros: 15.4wa screen, Centrino chipset, excellent power/value
Cons: Nothing to really call a con.
The Bottom Line:
A loveable notebook that will exceed your desktop and replace all of it's misgivings.
Im writing to you from the keyboard of my new Inspiron 8600, replete with cdrw/DVD-rw+, 15.4wa screen, 128m video, Centrino 1.4mhzP4, 60g hdd, and 512m ram.
Three things I want to address that have been mentioned, keyboards were a problem but have been fixed and the next generation will no doubt be even better as they will include additional securing points for the keyboard. The heat problem cited by some regarding Dell notebooks aren't present in the Centrino setup.
And speaking of Centrino concerns, the new chip from Intel is fast and powerful. It is very difficult to get into the mindset of this new nomenclature- by saying 1.4ghz- you think "Im stepping backwards." Not so, the numbers are confusing- but just remember that this is a different class of chip- and the new numbers need to be expressed AFTER you say the magic words- Centrino 1.4ghz. Yes it is a pentium4, yes it is a powerful chip. Making sure to say Centrino should help to differentiate the chip classes.
That having been said- we ran our benchmark tests on it and it came out well and above any machine to date, including Pentium4 2.4ghz systems. Granted, this one is a well built book with the better graphics card(128m video ram), but for a notebook, very impressive. We opened a 5.4meg drawing in Autocad 2002 in less than 5 seconds. We have edited 300meg tif files in Adobe Photoshop 7 with no problem, and run games like Aquanox 2 at full resolution and with the extra graphics turned on. It hasnt fussed at all.
Wirelessly, the Broadcom card works great, and gives us a good range.
With al of the options for firewire, sound out, dvd digital outs, and the fact it has a dvd-rw drive is most impressive.
One last note, I bought this at delloutlet.com. We have been a solutions provider for over ten years and have dealt with Dell extensively. Outside of farming out their tech support to India, we still like doing business with them and trust their products. Coming out of refurb all machines have the full factory warranty, and often have idiosyncrasies fixed (like keyboards that rattle).
It was a ridiculously good deal.
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