Dell studio 1558 mini review.

[thinkpadcollection]

Is middle of line negative in opinion.

Number one problem is hinge mounts in LCD assembly relies on both plastic (snapped together to prevent opening up) and screws. Mine is broken in this area. Also stamped and folded metal flexes excessively if the plastic parts is broken. Also brass screws anchored into plastic is left to afterthought for durablity.

Second one is GPU is permanently on even the processor is capable of intergrated ATI GPU. Like anyone with need for linux is a problem especially with older ATI chips.

Third, battery is not well designed to manage best lifetime like I usually see with other notebooks. I got second used battery and it is same issue.

USB install via windows 7 is fussy with stick type and which usb port is used, which is not clarified in forums on the internet search.

Heatsink is decent but I rather like to see copper fins. Dell is infamous for poor heatsink design even in D810 era.

Sorry I sounds so gloomy... I wanted to take off my chest on this. This thing was given to me and all I did was swap dead seagate 500GB for nice HGST 7,200rpm 32MB 500GB. And matched up 4GB to 4GB stick I found by luck on ebay.

For a freeie notebook it was ok to toy with but that impressions from dell is dreadful than I would like for a minimum quality standards. Which is sad to say. So I wanted T410 to transfer parts into.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[theterminator93]

Agree with everything above. We got one of these for the wife when she started vet school some 4 years ago. She's not particularly easy on her computer(s), but this one has fared particularly poorly. In that time it's eaten three hard drives, two keyboards, three LCD assemblies and hinges. LCD assembly feels particularly weak as well.

Also dealt with one of these for a client - motherboard eventually went bad on it, so I've scrapped it for parts for the wife's unit.