This is a laptop that’s very dear to me, as it’s a gift from my best friend, Vlad. I’ve known this laptop for ages (well, since he bought it) and was first of all a really really pretty gadget. I remember when he got it, I was super excited about it, because the design looked so bonkers! It’s also pretty powerful, considering its age, the Mobile Sempron 3500+ @ 1800 MHz being more than capable of the day to day tasks one would throw at a computer 18 years ago. Even today, it does its job fine and if you need a retro rig, this is a good choice.

All in all, a really nice reliable laptop that will get the retro™ treatment fairly soon. This means that I’ve upgraded Windows XP to have the latest updates installed and I will soon add the big folder of games that I’ve selected after doing the Old Computer Challenge, which should make this computer ready for a LAN party, as the dedicated graphics card would make it a very powerful machine for older (ancient?) games. However, there’s a small issue with it, as the keyboard seems to work only about 60% of the time.

I’ve tried to clean it using isopropyl alcohol and various brushes and air blowers, and I think fn and one of the arrow keys are partly stuck and make an imperfect contact, but I don’t have more than I can do. I’ve ordered a replacement keyboard and it’s funny that it’s going to have Cyrillic characters on top, so I might learn to type in Russian as well!

All the drivers for this model can be downloaded from the Dell Support Page

Update: I received today the Russian keyboard, tested it, gave it a good clean almost breaking a key and then reassembled it all together and now it’s all GG.

Technical Specifications

Downloads