Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Intro: I am a graduate student in need of a computer I can carry in between my job, classes, and travel destinations. Due to the nature of my schedule. I was in need of a computer: 1) small enough I could store in my backpack/briefcase. 2) Light enough that it wouldn't feel uncomfortable to drag around like my 15.6" Dell laptop. 3) Compact and versatile enough to open up on an airplane/train and get serious work done--sometimes requiring split screens with MS Office and hand drawing supply and demand graphs using touch input. 4) LOOONNG Battery life. 5) Lastly. I was in need of a computer study enough to withstand moderate the moderate abuse inflicted by a busy work-student-traveler lifestyle. Initial thoughts: I knew that Dell "skimped" a bit with the choice of components of this laptop. Certainty, the specs could be better... but I get it, Dell was trying to offer a good value for the price. I ended up choosing to buy this laptop over the Lenovo competitor because of its ability to be easily upgraded. I bought a Kingston 250Gb SSD with it, and I intend on buying an 8Gb RAM upgrade soon. OUT OF THE BOX: the mechanical 500 GB hard drive slows down the computer to the point of annoyance. I wasn't satisfied with a 20second boot speed. When running a browser, Office, Evernote, and Spotify expect a considerable amount of lag. Upgrade #1: Having a mechanical hard drive in a computer that is supposed to be a versatile 2-in-1 just doesn't make sense. There aren't many tablets out there that have mechanical hard drives. The moving, flipping, jerking, and tossing will eventually wear down the mechanical hard drive to the point of failure. I added the 250 GB SSD very easily by simply removing the back cover. Boot speed went down to 9 seconds. I experience no lag when running Chrome, Office, Evernote, and Spotify. The battery life went up significantly to an average of 8hrs. It's also worth mentioning that the laptop is completely silent at this point... The rest of the laptop: KEYBOAD/MOUSE/ TOUCH INPUT: I see a lot of people have complained about the keyboard and trackpad. In my experience, the keyboard feels solid and doesn't exhibit much flex. The trackpad is less sturdy than the keyboard and is not very fun to click into. I also increased the palm rejection setting and it doesn't bother me when I'm typing/drawing on it. I experienced a faulty touchscreen from the start. When I flipped the hinges into "tablet mode" the touch screen would no longer work. I sent it back and got a replacement. The touch screen now works fine. Once again, you have to be ready to do a bit of trouble shooting with this computer. SOUND: amazing sound for the price. Every time I play music from Spotify my friends comment "wow that's louder than my Mac." SCREEN/HDMI: vivid colors, great contrast rate, for an 11.6 inch screen, I am pleased. I always have the brightness all the way up and I don't experience any problems. HDMI can be a little funny to configure at once but I finally got it to adjust to my 22" dell monitor. Conclusion: buy it if you're competent with computer troubleshooting. The hardware may be faulty due to the lack of quality testing from Dell. I highly recommend upgrading the hard drive to an SSD if you're trying to get anything serious done. The battery life is very impressive. Overall I recommend this product despite the problems I had with it. I knew what I was getting myself into in the first place and that lowered my expectations enough to be willing to shape this device into "my own." If you're up for a challenge, get it. I will offer an update in the following months describing the 8GB RAM upgrade. ********UPDATE******** 12/31/2014 Thank you for taking the time to read my review and leaving questions. I've had the laptop now for a couple of months and I wanted to give an update on my thoughts: 1) My enhanced version of this laptop (SSD + 8Gb RAM) has completely replaced my larger more powerful Intel i7 15.6" Laptop. My inspiron runs just about everything. Including Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Illustrator. 2) The battery life took a hit with my heavy usage. I am now getting around 6.5hrs of battery life... But then again, that's still REALLY good. 3) I recently bought a stylus to accompany this laptop. If you are considering buying one, I highly recommend you buy a stylus with magnets. The inspiron has four sets on magnets: Two near on either side of the trackpad and two above the upper edges of the monitor. When I am in class, I simply "snap" my stylus onto the screen. When I close my laptop I snap the stylus onto the outer edge of the trackpad. This may sound really geeky, but I have gotten many compliments on this simple feature at the time I am sitting in the middle of a meeting and I am able to draw figures on my screen like I would with a pen and pencil. 4) Heat: when the laptop is in heavy usage, it gets hot. Not uncomfortably hot, though. FINAL thoughts: I have not had any problems with the laptop in the past three months of usage. I have been very surprised at the performance I am getting. I am going to raise this review to FIVE starts instead of my previous four star review. This laptop deserves more attention and it's a complete underdog in the market.