Comments on: Dell Inspiron 1520/1521 Available

By: John Cimeno

John Cimeno — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 03:57:40 +0000

I’ve had a Dell Inspiron 1520 for 4 years now, and have not had any trouble with it at all. It still runs fine and fast, even with Vista Installed.

Specification:
Core 2 Duo T5250 @ 1.5 GHZ
2GB DDR2 667
160GB Hard Drive
Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB
Windows Vista Business 32-bit

By: kim

kim — Fri, 20 May 2011 21:34:22 +0000

I have the Inspiron 1520,1525 and 1720. all out of the box had the problem with flickering and flashing when coming out of hibernate or closing the lid. Updating the video driver fixed the problem immediately. Hope this helps!

By: Shana

Shana — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:54:14 +0000

I have had nothing but problems with my 1521 since the start. It arrived scratched, I have had to re-install from the disks countless times due to complete crashes, have had to have a tech come out at least 5 times and 3 of those it had to be sent off. Three years and 3 motherboards later I am finally giving up on this piece of ____ due to a recent short in the motherboard,and getting a new laptop.

By: Ray

Ray — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:41:01 +0000

Have had a 1520 for about 2 years. Had issues with it from the beginning, but most were minor. Did not do anything about it because software they put on it said it was warranted till 12/10. When the problems began to really bug me (not wake from sleep), I tried to contact them and no luck. Warranty was long ago over. NEVER EVER EVER BUY A DELL.

By: Yvonne

Yvonne — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:59:08 +0000

Ive have a 1521 since mid 2007 and gotta say ive never had a real issue give on vista it ran like a cheap piece of shit but now on Win7 it runs perfectly but ive never had a real problem and its only ever blue screened once which can happen to any laptop. I will however agree that dell are useless for customer support i was told three days fro delivery and waited over a month but still over all i love my lap top :)

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:24:51 +0000

After shutting down during use (black screening) and not restarting at all, I just got word that my Dell 1521 has a bad Motherboard that to fix would cost $528.00 with labor & part’s. (yea, right!) That’s after replacing the crappy battery which failed right after the 2 year service contract had ended. (Many others had the same problem) And after dealing with Dell and talking to many other former Customers along with the repair shop, I’ve learned that Dell has Major Quality issues and they really suck with Customer Service, so my advice is to avoid them at all cost as Dell doesn’t care about it’s Customers after the sale.

By: Alessandro

Alessandro — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:13:11 +0000

I’m seeing a lot of misdirected complaints here.
The issues with waking in sleep mode are actually to do with the drivers (unless an actual hardware fault) not the PC itself.

Make sure you have the latest hotfixes from Microsoft, and the latest display drivers from Dell.

If you are a little more technical, and don’t mind trialling various newer drivers, try http://www.laptopvideo2go.com (no this isn’t spam) it’s a really good site for people with laptops who are looking for newer drivers than the manufacturers provide.

By: Guy

Guy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:27:59 +0000

My wife has a 1521 with Vista. That computer is a pile of *&(_. I have two very old desk tops with XP that are at least 5x faster and they don’t lock up like the 1521. Sometimes the only way to get it to boot is to remove the battery, remove the power, press the power-on button (to discharge the capacitors inside and force memory reset) and then plug the stuff in again. That is has also been the solution when it claims that the power supply is bad (which it isn’t). Not only is the 1521 poorly built but Dell is poorly managed for generating this piece of )(*&&_.

By: Renee

Renee — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:23:54 +0000

Every time my Inspiron 1520 laptop will not wake up from sleep mode. I have to cold boot it every time. It concerns me that I have to turn off the computer with programs still open when it is asleep. I have read several post and was hoping someone had found a way to correct this problem

thanks

By: sgriffith

sgriffith — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:15:58 +0000

I fixed the sleep/black screen problem at long last – I got a new display. Not cheap, but it works fine now.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:38:15 +0000

I have had my Dell inspiron 1521 for over a year now. It was extremely slow with Vista so I immeidately removed Vista and put Windows XP Pro SP2 on the machine and It has never given me any trouble. I have notice that since Win ME there is many systems with the not walking up after sleep mode. This seems both software and system related. Since this I never use sleep mode and shut it off but to this date never had any issues once switched back to Windows XP.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:31:28 +0000

Never, EVER, get a laptop with Vista, NEVER!!
My 1520 work great, a little slow perhaps for graphics , but does the job for me. I also want a spare hard dive but cannot find one anywhere.
Any suggestions?

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:45:26 +0000

I had a similar probelm on my Dell 1520. Couldn’t access the internet anywhere except my home wireless network. We determined it was a firewall setting probably changed by an antivirus update. After great struggling we went into the “Windows Firewall with Advanced Security” and clicked on “Restore Defaults” on the right. That fixed it.

By: angel

angel — Sun, 24 May 2009 00:42:23 +0000

kristin your problem maybe that when you updated your security it setup a firewall that blocks your internet connections. For everyone else sleep mode also doesnt work for me i try to wake it up and it shuts off. i just purchased 4gigs of ram to max it out wish me luck lol.

By: Kristin

Kristin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:15:07 +0000

I have the 1520 model which seemed to work fine until the other day after a antivirus update, it quit transmitting signal. I can view available networks all day, but it simply will not talk to them… Anyone else have hardware issue like this? Help!

By: Rawr

Rawr — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:44:40 +0000

Hey guys,
I’ve come to realize that these dell inspirons are actually not very good at all. I spent six months with tech support on and off trying to fix my computer. I had motherboard failure and hard drive failure. They finally replaced it after hours upon hours of work and sent me a refurbished one. Comes to find out, it crashes once again. It was explained to me from tech support on campus that vista tends to kill these computers for some odd reason. It’s really not a great laptop at all. I wish luck to all that have one.

By: Don

Don — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:53:04 +0000

Bought my wife an Inspiron 1521-she wanted the red one -so we waited and waited- finally arrived. Same problems all of you are having I’m convinced its the Vista OS Its a memory hog!!
Be sure you have the full 4 GIGS of memory before doing anything else. My wife’s arrived with 800 MB- that will hardly even boot up Vista.

My old Inspiron 700m with 2000 runs rings around hers. Unfortunately Microsoft stops supporting it soon!!
My next??? A MAC!!!!!!!
good luck

By: Stacey

Stacey — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:57:38 +0000

I purchased the top of the line 1521 back in late fall after a ton of research. A week later I started having issues with it. It eventually got to the point where they wanted to replace it but I was in the middle of finals/papers so I couldnt immediately. I called back when I was done with enough time that I could receive it before going home for Winter break. They told me that they were going to replace my 1800 computer with a re-ferbushed one. I wasn’t happy with that and said I wanted it replaced or my money back since I had countless issues with it since the week after I bought it and it was all documented. After a few minutes the guy got back on the phone and told me that a new one was being sent to me.

1521 Computer 2: A couple weeks after purchasing it I started having problems with this computer as well. I took off Vista and put XP back onto it which solved a lot of the problems, but then the random shut offs, black screens and such started becoming an issue again so I called Dell back. After 2 different computer guys and 3 days of working on my computer they basically replaced the motherboard and everything else inside my computer.

6 month update, my computer randomly crashes in the middle of me doing stuff fairly frequently. Restart it everythings fine just missing most of the stuff I had going (typically research stuff). After reading the complains on this I can’t get mine out of sleep mode and have never been able to. I went to use a CD the other day and the drive started making really werid noises, I figured I would try it again early this week and if I cant figure it out call them. Tonight I was surfing only one web page and had a messenger open and my computer started making a weird sound. I thought it was werid cause I couldnt figure out where it was coming from. Muted my speakers it stopped went to get my phone to call a friend to see what he would suggest unmuted it when on the phone with him and it was making AWFUL sound I can’t even explain.

I am convinced that this model is a lemon. When the guys came to work on my computer in spring I couldnt find this model for sale on their web page anymore.

What I would suggest: Use hibernate instead of sleep
-call dell and keep calling dell until someone will actually help you and get you what you want (someone to come fix it and whatnot)
-Be patient half the time the person has to talk to someone else to even know what to tell you it seems
-Document everything, and the persons name you’re talking to
-even if they say they will email you the conversation or whatever, half the time it wont arrive

By: ron

ron — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:18:22 +0000

How is this a review ??? This more like a specification /article.

By: Theresa Fednander

Theresa Fednander — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:14:02 +0000

My Dell Inspiron 1521 is less than 6 months old & they have alread had to replace the mother board & now the USB ports are not working half the time & they say they will have to send it off for another couple of weeks for repairs……I think I have a lemon, but they will not replace it!