Dell DTR Laptop Shootout - M1710 vs. E1705
by Jarred Walton on May 30, 2006 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Application Performance
We'll start out with the typical office application benchmarks. We've run PCMark05 as well as Winstones 2004. We don't expect to see much in the way of performance differences in Winstones, since all of the systems are essentially the same other than the graphics card. The system with 1 GB of RAM might also perform a bit slower, but generally speaking Winstones doesn't require more than 1GB of RAM (if that).
The results are pretty much as we would expect. All three systems perform similarly in Winstones, though the ATI X1400 system is slightly slower in the business section and slightly faster in the content creation portion. PCMark05 shows a larger difference between the systems, since it includes some graphics tests. If you don't plan on doing 3D work, we wouldn't put too much weight in the PCMark05 results.
We won't bother running any encoding benchmarks, as those basically depend on CPU and memory performance more than anything else, so they would essentially show identical encoding results. You can refer to some of our initial M1710 article if you'd like to get a better idea of how the systems compared to others.
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Gary Key - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - link
Jarred will be reviewing these in the near future.tthiel - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - link
I've been issued plenty of Dell laptops at the various companies I have worked for and they were all cheap plasticky junk. I've lost track of how many died on me. I was just given a new Thinkpad T43P and it is much better. Very well made, rock solid. So many of the engineers where I work wanted those instead of Dells that they had to restructure the ordering process and images to take care of all the new Thinkpads.JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - link
I've heard about problems with ThinkPads now that Lenovo has taken over. (I haven't used any personally, so I can't say for sure.) I have also used many of the older Inspiron models, and have been unimpressed. These are definitely in a different league, however -- the cheap plastic case (at least on top) has been replaced by aluminum, for example. The problem is that most businesses don't buy higher end Dell laptops; they go with the more value oriented offerings, and whenever prices cut you can be sure that quality is cut as well.We're hoping to expand our mobile coverage in the future, so this is merely the beginning. As time goes on, we'll have more products that we can directly compare new offerings with. For now, I'm generally impressed with what the E1705 offers. Impressed enough that I recommended one to a family member, after browsing around looking for a suitable equivalent. Getting a large laptop with a 17 inch (or larger) display, 1920x1200 resolution, dual core processor, etc. is pretty difficult right now. Getting one with 2 GB of RAM for $2300 is even more difficult. Not everyone wants a laptop this large, certainly, but for those that do the E1705 is quite good.
jenson - Monday, January 7, 2013 - link
when cheap laptops really got a good shake, with many models looking and behaving a lot more like their costly cousins than in the past.