Dell Inspiron B130 and B120 Review (pics, specs)
Introduction
The Dell Inspiron B130 is a 15.4" widescreen notebook, depending on how you configure it the B130 can be considered a budget offering or a mainstream type notebook with decent performance. The Inspiron B120 offered by Dell is precisely the same as the B130 except with a 14-inch widescreen.And inspiron b120 battery have the same code as inspiron b130 battery. The B120 build and dimensions match that of the B130, only the B120 has a thicker plastic area around the screen to replace the display real estate. The following is a review of the Inspiron B130 but the evaluation can be carried over and applied to the B120 as well.
Specs for Inspiron B130 as reviewed:
Design and Build
This is a budget notebook and as such is constructed in a manner to keep costs down. The body casing is entirely plastic, no fancy aluminum or magnesium protection. The plastic used is not flimsy though, it's actually really quite sturdy. I used the Dell Inspiron 1000 a while back and was highly disappointed with the flimsiness of the casing, the B130 is certainly a step up from that,but it have a powerful dell inspiron b130 battery . There's no major flexing issues of the body and the keyboard is firm.
The hinges are firm, there's no wobble of the screen even if you move the notebook around. This is impressive, often with budget notebooks the hinges can be somewhat weak. The protection provided by the lid is also good, if you push in on the lid area it's hard to get ripples to appear on the screen. However, the plastic area around the screen is not held on very well and on the B120 (14-inch screen version of the B130) it is very thick and ugly looking. I can pull the plastic covering away from the LCD with ease.
The look of the Inspiron B130 is a mix of silver and black. The lid is an entirely silver-grey color while the rest of the body is black with an accent of silver trim around the keyboard. The look is not bad in this author's opinion, and actually better than the some off the exisiting Dell Inspirons available with the silver and white finish. It's certainly not sleek or pretty by any stretch, it looks like the plastic it is built from, the front speakers are ugly holes in plastic that look more like vents, and the largish green LED light indicators on the front are reminiscent of a 1980's mainframe computer. So no design awards but due to the well selected and professional black-silver coloring it's not ugly either.
Screen
The Inspiron B130 is a widescreen notebook that uses a WXGA resolution (1280 x 800). The screen is a matte finish and there is no option for the popular glossy high-contrast display finish that Dell calls "TrueLife". The screen brightness is middling, it's certainly not as bright and glorious as the Dell Inspiron 700m or the Dell XPS M140 I've reviewed in the past.Inspiron 700m battery , When on AC power the screen is bright enouggh, but when you switch to battery it becomes too dim -- you can adjust your display and power settings to force the screen to be brighter when on battery but at the cost of shorter battery life. Overall, the text and images are sharp and the matte screen means you won't get a bunch of reflection on the screen that can become distracting.
There's some light leakage around the bottom area and lighting is not even across the screen, but this is only noticeable on dark backgrounds such as the default Windows XP screensaver in which the screen is all black and the Windows logo can be seen floating across it. Also, it seems that some colors are not true -- reds tend to appear a bit orange like so it's probably not the best display for those really into photo editing.
Processor and Performance
You can opt to have your Inspiron B130/B120 configured with either a Pentium M or Celeron M processor. You'll save money with the Celeron M configuration and to be honest, I think that's the best route to go with this notebook. It's a budget machine and when you have the Intel 910GML chipset and motherboard (as the dell B130 battery / B120 battery does) you're going to be limited to a bus speed of 400MHz between the processor and memory. Even though my system indicated a 533MHz FSB on the Pentium M 740 processor I configured and the memory I have can theoretically run at 533MHz, it does not, it runs at 400MHz. So esentially Dell put together a machine in which the chipset is the weakest link, and since components work together as a team, the system can only be as fast as that weakest link is willing to work (400MHz).
