Dell has announced the new Inspiron 15 laptop, the latest addition to the Inspiron line of systems offering solid performance and smart style at a great value.

The 15.6-inch, 1366×768 glossy screen is nice and bright, with a webcam situated at the top. The left side features two USB ports, a VGA port and 100Mb Ethernet, while the right features a single USB port, DVD+-RW and ExpressCard 34 slot. The front lip is kept similarly simple, with an indicator light for power, headphone and microphone jack and an SD/MMC/MS card reader. Wireless communications are limited to 802.11g — you’ll find no 802.11n or Bluetooth here, but both are optional extras for AU$29.70 and AU$13.20 respectively.

Software-wise, the Inspiron 15 runs on Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, with our review sample arriving with McAfee Security Center 30-day trial, Microsoft Office 2007 trial and Roxio Creator DE. Dell has also bundled its own software, including a dock that sits at the top of the screen purely for quick access to applications; DataSafe, which gives you 2GB storage online for free for 12 months, Dell Remote Access, webcam apps and a wireless configuration utility.

The new Dell Inspiron 15 notebook features:

Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile processor T6400 2.0GHz , 800MHz system bus, 2MB L2 cache.
4GB DDR2 SoDIMM memory
Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support
15.6-inch WXGA widescreen LCD display (1366×768) resolution.
320GB SATA hard drive
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD graphics(up to 384MB shared graphics memory)
Built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam
8-in-1 digital media reader
3 USB 2.0 ports
Built-in Dell 1397 wireless networking mini-card (802.11b/g)
Built-in Gigabit Ethernet network card
Weighs 3kg(approx.)

Performance
Inside our review sample was a Core 2 Duo T600 at 2.1GHz, 3GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive. This interesting mix gave us impressive results for a sub-AU$1000 laptop, scoring 874 in 3DMark06 (only bested by the Toshiba L500D), and 4043 in PCMark05, making it OK for casual gaming (but certainly not capable of playing new titles), and excellent for general use and office work.

Turning off all power-saving features and setting screen brightness and volume to maximum, we played back an XviD file and the battery lasted two hours, 39 minutes and 47 seconds, longer than any other sub-AU$1000 notebook we’ve tested. It must be noted this is an incredibly harsh test — with casual use, battery life will be longer.

From Mark

hi guys…..im a german foreign student and live here in manila for about 5 years now…actually i just bought a neo netbook…i think its a vivid v1103…thats the cheapest netbook they got…i bought it for 14.999PHP…i already got a toshiba 17incher …wow what a monster and i bought that in germany where i most got my gadgets from…hehe but this neo mini notebook i just recently bought.wow, i must say thats a very good reliable sub-notebook…im very satisfied…i just bought that because i need a small laptop for my college classes….its a intel atom 1.6…1gb ram….wifi ready 8.9inch screen and glossy finish design etc bla bla…and for that price 15k…thats very good and cheap…. actually i had bought an acer or hp but when i saw this notbook….i just had to get one… for that price!!??i mean,there is nothing broke!!…i got it for some days now and i didnt encounter any problems yet or what soo ever…but i did read some comments above and many say that it is a crappy fucking laptop etc…if i point now on my vivid i have to say that i dont agree what the other people say, that its very slowly and bad looking and shit…i really love my vivid…soo me as a German…i am actually very proud that philippines can create or can produce their own brand of laptops and mini notebooks…and since i dont really buy my gadgets here in the philippines, then neo really has a good potential to invade the international market with their incoming future notebooks and tech related stuff… and for other people who said that they dont trust their own country made products…..*tooot*…because soo long until you dont support your own nation how could you EVER be a successfull country…i refered this notebook to all my friends who are mostly americans koreans etc…i many of them bought also from neo…and no one yet had an bad error encounter or etc..i mean…ofcourse their are some people who had some BAD experience with their neo products but i believe that neo should be supported by all of us who are part of this country…so it dosent really matters if neo is good or bad…and like many of u said start-up companies are like taht bla bla… i mean look nokia..they started with making toilet-papers and boots and look at them now…or APPLE ipod stuff…their first ipod till 3rd generation was an DISASTER…and now?? almost every ****  has one…see…lets be a little optimistic with neo and give and some time…and i promise you…they can do it BIG-TIme..haha anyways…thanks for reading this…and take care…SALAMAT.

From Chean

Sorry, but for me and my friends, Neo laptops really suck… I’ve got my Neo lappy for more than a year now. 3 months after the purchase, the motherboard broke. It was needed to be replaced then, i needed to wait 1 month before my laptop was given back to me.

Neo has a very bad customer service. They’ll tell you they’d get back to you but they will never will. Neo doesn’t know how to take care of their customers.

Neo laptops are very cheap but of poor quality. I’ve regretted buying it the first time the motherboard broke. Now, it’s more than a year. Just last Monday, it won’t boot up, with a blackscreen, out of the blue. It was doing fine when I shut it down before I left the house and when I opened it the moment I’ve arrived at our client’s office, it really went out.

I’m working as an IT consultant and having laptop is a necessity. That very same day, I hurried to Neo Care - SM Megamall to have it fixed. They promised me of 7 working days turn around time. They told me that a service fee of Php 1,000 would be charged to me since i’m out of warranty - either it is repaired or not. According to the poster seen at Neo Care, this is in lieu of upgrading their customer service quality. I was told that I could just follow-up thru YM and by logging into the tracking service requests of the Neo Website.

2 days after, I tried adding Neo’s YM ID to my contacts but it was offline. Then, I tried using the tracking service requests of the Neo website but it only says “Invalid serial no.” whenever I inputted the serial no. of my laptop. Unable to use the “improvements”, I resorted to calling Neo Customer Service.

I asked the call center agent if my laptop is already in their service center - Boni Ave. but she told me she can’t locate/track my laptop and she’ll try to check at SM Mega if it’s still there. They cannot track my lappy’s location because according to her, the website is down and not functioning the time I called… I brought my lappy to be fixed the soonest possible but it is still not in Boni Ave. where it’s supposed to be checked thoroughly.

I called again last Friday to check on my lappy’s status and I was informed that it has been delivered to Boni Ave. already and still not yet been diagnosed for the “further problems”.

Early in the afternoon, this day, i’ve called again and got a hard time connecting thru the Customer Care hotline. Then, after 30 minutes of waiting, someone picked up my call. I asked for the status of my lappy and again, I was told, it has been not yet diagnosed.

With this kind of customer service Neo has, what is the Php 1,000 service charge for? I thought the customer service would be much better but what happened? How could you inquire if the Neo’s ym id is offline? How can you be able to use their website’s tracking services if your laptop cannot be tracked?

I’m not the only one complaining about these issues. I’ve heard a lot of rants about the Neo’s quality and customer service nightmare… even my friends tell me of their bad experiences with Neo laptops. As a techie, I cannot recommend this brand to my friends and even in our company.

@Neo, I just hope you could hear where we are coming. After sales support is quite essential to us, your customers. Don’t you value long term relationship with us? Price is not the only basis for purchasing gadgets. Good customer support has always been one of the key factors.

To Mark;

Not all people get the laptop they want and need, like I’ve said before some of their unit come out defective. We do support our products its just in this forums we get more complaints that remarks on their units, its not our fault to be like we are. We are only consumers  that want better functioning products. We all complain on things, complaining makes things better. Like service in a restaurant to satisfy our need and yet they lack of it, we complain to make it more better. Its just that there are so many complaints about their products and units, its for the better not for worse but by the looks of it its getting worse because of so many complaints about it. Like you said they should be supported to make them better but would you think of how long has neo been making laptops? and yet there are still some bad experiences out there from people who bought laptops from them? many years has passed and yet there are still complaints.

Well thanks for the shared experiences from Mark and Chean, I hope some of the people who read these get ideas on what laptop really suits them. Its ok to get cheaper laptops to save up, you’ll be the one who’s gonna use it not us think of whats better for you. We here just give our point of view and opinions on what unit we got our hands on and have used for some time. Thanks again and i’ll be posting some of the other people that shared their experiences on their laptops.