Dell Inspiron 14 5000 Series review: An attractive middle-of-the-road 14-inch laptop

Elegant and affordable are two words that describe Dell’s Inspiron 14 5000 series. The brushed aluminum and black minimalist styling Dell has treated this laptop with give it an air of class you don’t often see in a mid-range, all-purpose laptop. It looks more expensive than its $750 price tag, which ironically, makes every imperfection seem that much greater. Hence, less-than-spectacular and slightly frustrating are also valid descriptions.

The Inspiron 5447's brushed-aluminum lid makes this mid-range laptop look more expensive than it is.

The Inspiron 14 5000 series sport 14-inch (duh), glossy, relatively low-res 1366x768 touchscreen displays that are prone to glare and have narrow viewing angles. If you buy one, I suggest sitting directly in front of it, adjusting the screen angle, and watching better movies. Trust me on this. If the movie is good enough, you won’t be worrying about pixels. This is one of those instances when the Inspiron 14 5000’s good looks make you think it deserves better. Or at least a non-touch option to lower its price.

The Inspiron 14 5000 series starts at $600 for an Intel Core i3-4030U, 4GB of DDR3L/1600 memory, and a 500GB hard drive; ramps up to $749 for the model 5447 reviewed here (with a Core i5-4210U, 8GB of memory, and a 1TB, 5,400 rpm Western Digital WD10JPVX-75JC3T0 hard drive); and tops out at $850 with a Core-i5-4510U model with the same memory and hard drive. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be an SSD option.

Our model weighed in at 4.65 pounds sans AC adapter; 5.4 pounds with it. It measures 13.5-inches wide, 9.75-inches deep, and 0.8-inches thick—that’s not thin-and-light territory, but it’s not so bulky that your friends will be amused at your purchase.

The Inspiron 5000 series is only 0.8 inches thick, but it weighs 4.7 pounds.

The 5447 has two USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized HDMI port, a headset jack, and a 10/100 ethernet port on its right-hand side; and a USB 2.0 port, media card reader, and AC jack on its left. There’s nothing in back and nothing in front apart from two speaker ports.

Use headphones with this laptop; its speakers sound weak and tinny.

The lack of gigabit ethernet is disappointing, but I’m happy to report the presence of 802.11ac Wi-Fi, plus Bluetooth 4.0 and WiDi (for wireless video streaming to displays that support Intel’s technology). There’s also a 720p webcam with dual-array mics.

Flat, slick, short-throw keys make for a less-than-pleasant typing experience for our reviewer.

The Inspiron 14 5447 scooted to a respectable 54 on PCWorld’s Laptop WorldBench 9 benchmark suite, and it managed to wring 4 hours and 50 minutes out of its internally mounted 43-watt hour battery. Hands on, I could tell it had a rather slow hard drive, especially on a cold boot. But after Windows cached what it needed to, the overall experience was more than acceptable.

No surprise here: This middle-of-the-road laptop produced a middle-of-the-road score on our WorldBench 9 benchmark suite. 

High bit-rate 1080p movies played super smoothly, but sound through the speakers was poor. There’s enough volume, but there’s no bass and the overall timbre is gratingly tinny. Whatever Dell did to make its Venue Pro 11 tablet so aurally pleasing should be shared with the Inspiron design team. Gaming is doable in Intel HD 4400 graphics terms, meaning you’re pretty much stuck at 1024x768 if you want anything close to 30 frames per second (the Inspiron 5447 delivered BioShock Infinite at 29 fps at that resolution, with image quality set to low).

Your entertainment options will be limited to movies, YouTube, and casual games. The Inspiron 5447 is not cut out for hardcore gaming.

You may have noticed the reference to an internal battery. You must remove two screws and the pressure-fit bottom panel to get at the 5447’s. These days, however, I don’t know a lot of people who carry extra batteries to swap; most folks prefer to seek an AC outlet at the appointed hour. The 5447’s run time isn’t fantastic, but it’s long enough for most scenarios.

Note that removing said bottom panel also provides easy access to the hard drive, Wi-Fi card, and memory slots. You might want to upgrade the hard drive to an SSD at some point, but 8GB is plenty of memory for most tasks.

Our battery run-down test is harsh. You'll probably get enough battery life for a full day, assuming you're not pounding the keyboard the full eight hours.

The Inspiron 14 5000’s keyboard isn’t one of my favorites. The keys lack the long travel and snap that’s my preference. But establishing a typing rhythm was easy enough, and the perq is that you can bang away in a quiet environment without unduly disturbing your neighbors. I also found the one-piece touchpad smoothly responsive and easy to click. I do have one complaint: The touchpad isn’t clearly tactilely or visually delineated from the rest of the keyboard deck. When not paying close attention, I missed it several times.

The PCMark 8: Office benchmark evaluates performance with Microsoft Office apps. Laptops without SSDs, like this one, don't fare as well as models that do. 

The Inspiron 14 5447 is a generally capable all-purpose laptop with top-shelf styling at an affordable price. But there’s a distinct lack of options to make it faster (SSD and gigabit ethernet, for starters) or even less expensive (via a non-touch display), so its good looks wind up being a bit of a tease.

Perhaps I’m being too being picky. This is good laptop that’s worthy of perusal if you’re shopping the middle of the road.

Editor's note: This article was updated on August 12 to report the correct Laptop WorldBench score of 54 (the chart was accurate, but the body text reported a score of 58).

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Dell Inspiron One 20 Touch review: An attractive budget all-in-one with unsatisfying peripherals and sound

Dell Inspiron One 20 Touch $699.00 The Dell Inspiron One is a sturdy, non-nonsense all-in-one. But Dell's ho-hum component choices deliver equally ho-hum benchmark performance.

I’m a big fan of Dell’s Inspiron One lineup of all-in-one PCs. These computers manage to be gorgeous, sturdy, and versatile while remaining relatively budget friendly. The Inspiron One 20 reviewed here has a smaller display than the Toshiba, but it costs more than $300 cheaper ($699 as of 8/29/13). It’s equipped with an Intel Core i3-3240T processor; 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory; and a 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive. It also has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, and a 20-inch capacitive touchscreen.

Design-wise, the Inspiron One 20 Touch is tough to beat, though the Toshiba PX35t-A2210 has a slightly more premium look. This all-black AIO features an edge-to-edge glass screen, which gives it a bezel-less appearance and also makes for easy swiping when performing common Windows 8 gestures (such as swiping from the side to pull up the charms bar). The minimalist bezel sports a small, mirrored Dell logo at the bottom and a built-in webcam at the top. The system’s speakers are just below the screen. There are no buttons or ports on the front of the One 20 Touch, these are all relegated to the system’s sides and back.

Dell's Inspiron One 20 Touch boasts a great design, but its performance leaves a bit to be desired.

The One 20 Touch’s great-looking design is slightly marred by its below-average peripherals. The system comes with a wired mouse and keyboard, both of which are utterly basic (though mostly comfortable to use). The keyboard offers very light tactile feedback, which can make accurate typing difficult. The mouse is large but comfortable, and offers an average input experience.

As for performance, the Inspiron One 20 Touch is good, but not great. It will get you through schoolwork and basic entertainment, such as streaming HD movies and playing music, but it won’t handle PC games or media-editing software very well. This Inspiron scores a very average 109 on WorldBench 8.1, which means it’s just nine percent faster than our Acer baseline model . Compared with the other AIOs in this roundup, the One 20 Touch is solidly in the middle – it comes in fourth, but it’s just one point below our third-ranked HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23 (110).

PCWorld's Desktop Worldbench 8.1 benchmark suite measures performance with a number of productivity, creation, and entertainment programs.

In our graphics tests, the One 20 Touch performed as expected: It managed a playable, if far from excellent, 30.7 frames per second on our Dirt Showdown test, and but only 14.8 fps with the more demanding BioShock Infinite (with both games, resolution was set to 1024 by 768 pixels, and image quality was set to Low). In other words, it can handle low-end PC games at an acceptable frame rate, but it’s about as far from a gaming powerhouse as a Commodore 64. HD video looks just okay—there’s quite a bit of artifacting and foreign objects in scenes with a medium amount of motion—and skin tones have a tendency to look burnt and oversaturated. Audio is also somewhat disappointing: The speakers aren’t very loud, and music lacks depth, even when all the software enhancements are turned on.

This chart indicates how well each all-in-one PC performed with a variety of media editing and encoding tasks. If this is an important consideration for your,the PCs with the shorter bars are your best choices. 

The Dell Inspiron One 20 Touch is a nice starter machine for those who like the Inspiron One look and feel. The touchscreen remains one of the better touchscreens that I’ve used, with smooth, accurate touch and a nice glidey feel to the glossy display. I especially like the adjustable stand, the minimalist design, and the overall sturdiness of the chassis. But it has its issues, including cheap, basic peripherals; mediocre performance; and weak speakers.

Editor's note: This all-in-one was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five all-in-ones we compared it to, here.

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Maxell MaxTab Tablets Hands-On: Sleek Android Slates at Attractive Prices

Two of the the tablets, the MaxTab C7 and MaxTab C8, are already available for sale, with the 99 Euro E7, 169 Euro H8 and 199 Euro H10 all coming to market later this fall. Unfortunately, Maxell has no plans to release its tablets in the U.S., but if you’re in Europe, these Android 4.0-powered Slates are definitely worth a look.

All five of the MaxTabs run stock Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. However, a Maxell rep told us that they don’t come with the Google Play market, but instead offer a third-party market. The demo units we tested still had Google Play on them, though.

This 9.7-inch tablet is powered by a 1.5-GHz Rockchip 3066 dual-core CPU with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, along with MicroSD and miniUSB ports. With its 7,800 mAH battery, the MaxTab H10 is said to last up to 8 hours. Its 1280 x 800-pixel IPS panel was not too bright, but it did seem quite colorful.

We particularly liked the glossy black bezel and the home button on its right side. Though Android 4.0 has a home button built into the OS, it’s always nice to have a hardware button that sits apart from the display. The back of the H10 looks identical to an iPad’s back. The MaxTab will be available for 199 euros when it comes out this fall.

The MaxTab H8 features the same 1.5-GHz dual-core RockChip 3066 processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage as its big brother, but it has an 8-inch, 1024 x 768 resolution screen instead. Its front bezel looks a lot like the H10's, but its back does not resemble an iPad’s. The MaxTab H8 will cost 169 euros when it comes out.

Our favorite of the MaxTabs, the 149 euro MaxTab C8, has a unique, brushed plastic bezel which is emblazoned with a silver Maxell logo. A luxurious soft-touch back felt good in our hands, but we were most intrigued by the C8's colorful 8-inch screen, which sports an 800 x 600 resolution that we haven’t seen on an Android tablet before.

The MaxTab C8 is powered by a 1.2-GHz Rockchip 2918, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of external storage. In addition to its mini HDMI, microSD, and miniUSB ports, the MaxTab has a full-size USB port you can use to copy files from/to your thumb drive. The MaxTab C8 is already available for sale.

The currently-available MaxTab C7 has a 7-inch, 800 x 480 screen but is powered by the Rockchip 2918 CPU and otherwise offers similar specs to the C8. Howevr, the glossy bezel and back were not particularly attractive and the screen seemed somewhat washed out. The MaxTab C7 goes for 129 euros.

The 7-inch MaxTab E7 is pretty similar to the C7, but it has a different processor, the 1.2-GHz Rockchip 2906, and its industrial design is a little different. The glossy black bezel has three capacitive buttons on it, which reminded us of older Android 2.3 tablets that needed these buttons like the original Samsung Galaxy Tab or the HTC Flyer.

However, like its siblings, the E7 runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The MaxTab E7 will cost just 99 euros when it ships later this fall.

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Design Attractive HTML5 Galleries With Ease Using Juicebox

Not a day goes by without cat pictures being shared on Facebook, or landscape photos being reused on Flickr via Creative Commons. But the recent acquisition of Instagram by Facebook may have you a bit nervous about hosting your images on someone else's servers. Or you may be a professional Web designer with a portfolio of clients wanting images hosted for business reasons. In these cases—and many others—you can retain more control over your photos by hosting them on your own website. Instead of programming a photo gallery from the ground up, you can take advantage of an app like Juicebox (various paid and free versions) instead.

Within moments, you can have a beautiful smooth HTML5 photo gallery up and running on your website.Right out of the gate, there are two big advantages to Juicebox. If your images total no more than 50, then it's all totally free (albeit with some nice features disabled). Second, it's all built on the up-and-coming HTML5 code standard. So you can be guaranteed a nice-looking smooth professional design with a minimum of fuss and virtually no learning curve. You don't have to be a Web designer, or even particularly tech-savvy, to use this program. Open up the app, follow the easy-to-understand instructions and copy/paste the provided code into your website. Done and finished. No fuss, no mess.

You can upload the images straight from your hard drive or from a Flickr account. Once inside the Juicebox app, the images can then be cropped and resized, and you can customize other factors such as the gallery background color, the opacity, the width and height, whether or not you want thumbnails and so on. Then when it's ready, it gives you the code to put into your website and you can also preview everything first in your browser to make sure it looks the way you want it.

If you're looking for an easy, quick way to host your own photos, then give Juicebox a try. The 50-images only rule for free customers is a little restrictive but like Twitter, it forces you to be concise and to the point, including only the images that really matter. There are two paid versions, Pro Single for $49 and Pro Multi for $99, both of which offer the same amount of professional features. The extra $50 for Pro Multi entitles you to use Juicebox on 5 domains instead of 1.

If you're prepared to shell out the cash for a Juicebox upgrade, you can take advantage of more features such as the removal of the branding, support for audio, autoplay, and watermarks. Oh and don't forget that upgrading removes the 50 maximum images restriction.

You may be pleasantly surprised by how nice you find Juicebox to be. So the next time your cat-loving buddy asks how to make a new online cat shrine without worrying about Fluffy endorsing cat food, send them this app. They'll have it up and running in no time.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

—Mark O'Neill

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LaCie 2Big Network 2 2TB Review: Attractive Design, Basic Function

The LaCie 2Big Network 2, with its aluminum fins and too-big blue front status indicator/sleep button has unique style. Beyond that, its best aspects are its stylish, well-written HTML interface and its ability to connect either to your router (via ethernet) or directly to a PC (via USB--an unusual trait for a network-attached box). Performance, on the other hand, though adequate for streaming media, is strictly middle-of-the-road.

The 2Big Network 2's supplied ports are a cut above the standard-issue consumer NAS configuration. You get a single gigabit ethernet port, a type B USB 2.0 port for attaching the drive directly to PCs or Macs, a type A USB 2.0 port, and an eSATA port for attaching fast external storage. The two drive bays, accessible from the rear of the unit, contain trays that are easy to remove and keep drives firmly in place with screws.

LaCie ships the 2Big Network 2 configured in RAID 0, which increases performance slightly and uses the drives to their full capacity, but leaves all data on the box at risk. Drive failure does happen, so keep the box backed up or consider switching to the supported RAID 1 mirroring configuration for data redundancy. We tested the $350 (as of March 23, 2012) 2TB version; LaCie also sells a 4TB version.

The 2Big Network 2's performance is adequate for streaming media and light home use, but not for businesses moving lots of data or backing up more than two or three PCs overnight. The unit read our 10GB mix of files and folders at 34.6 megabytes per second and wrote them at 20 MBps. It wrote our single 10GB test file at 32.1 MBps and read it at 53.9 MBps. Those numbers reflect merely average performance for a two-bay NAS box.

LaCie's HTML interface is attractive and (for the most part) well thought out, though features such as multimedia serving would have benefited from more-prominent placement. One other minor complaint: I'd like to be able to step back and forth between pages using the browser buttons; but at the moment, you must return to the main page by clicking on the Home button or the 2Big Network logo. On the plus side, the interface shelters you from some of the unnecessary complexity that boxes from QNAP and Synology may expose you to.

The 2Big Network 2 has all the software features that most users need: file sharing, iTunes and DLNA-compliant media surfing, backup, and the like. It's also one of the most Mac-friendly boxes we looked at in our roundup of 11 NAS boxes (many of LaCie's products target the Mac community), supporting Time Machine and harmonizing visually with Mac hardware. It can back up to other boxes via Rsync.

One of the 2Big Network 2's nicest design flourishes is its fail-safe power switch. The worst thing you can do with a NAS box is to cut off the power without giving the box time to close files properly. In contrast, switching the LaCie's power button to off simply initiates a polite shutdown sequence. If for some reason the box locks up, you can always pull the power cord.

For a significantly lower price than you'd pay for a Synology or QNAP box with drives, the LaCie 2Big Network 2 nails the essentials. Performance is fine for home use, though not for businesses or for situations that entail handling lots of simultaneous access.

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