The Dell Vostro 1000 is the budget offering in the Dell Small Business lineup of laptops. It has a 15.4′ screen and comes with an AMD Turion processor. The Dell Vostro 1000 is priced at under $500 with a basic configuration, so the price really can’t be complained about. But does the low price equate to a cheap product or is this laptop a great deal for the buck? This review will attempt to answer that.
Specs of Vostro 1000 under review:
- Mobile AMD Sempron Processor 3500+ 1.80GHz
- 15.4′ Widescreen XGA (non-glare)
- 512MB of RAM at 533MHz
- ATI Radeon Express 1150
- 60GB 5400RPM HD
- Windows XP Home
- Dell Wireless 1390 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi
- 24X CD Burner DVD Combo
Places to buy
You can buy the Dell Vostro 1000 via Dell.com or over the phone. The Vostro 1000 is easy to configure at Dell.com. I had to wait less than 10-days for my Vostro to ship after placing the order. In fact, it shipped 5-days after placing the order and arrived to me in a total of 7-days. Quite impressive!
Looks and Construction Quality
It’s quite obvious that a nice design wasn’t even considered with the Vostro 1000. This laptop couldn’t possibly be more standard issue looking. It’s made of black plastic and mostly square looking. There is simply no design flare to the laptop. It’s fairly ugly in my opinion, but then again there’s nothing offensive about it. Anyone that cares a lot about the design looks of tech products they buy probably will not consider the Vostro 1000. A small business looking to buy cheap laptops will probably not care about the fact the Vostro 1000 looks like an ugly beast next to say a MacBook Pro.
The build quality of the Vostro 1000 is middling, as you would expect for this price. It’s made entirely of plastic, but is not as flimsy as you might assume. In fact, the plastic body doesn’t have too much give to it. I’ve certainly experienced worse, cheap Acer laptops sold in CompUSA for $400 definitely feel more flimsy than the Vostro 1000.
One thing you should be aware of is that the chassis and build quality of the Vostro 1000 is entirely different to the Vostro 1400 and Vostro 1500. The Vostro 1400 and 1500 have magnesium in their case body, which makes them much sturdier. If you need a laptop to last you 3 ‘ 4 years, the Vostro 1400/1500 are the way to go. They also look nicer because they have a bit of a curved finish, media buttons, LED accent lighting and you can see a metallic finish that’s more professional looking.
Weigh-in
The advantage of the Vostro 1000 being made of plastic is that it’s actually quite light for a 15.4′ screen laptop. It’s only slightly heavier than the Vostro 1400 a smaller 14.1′ screen laptop. In the picture below you’ll see that the Vostro 1000 tips the scale at 5.8lbs, which is really quite light for the size:
Here’s a comparison of the Vostro 1000 weight to some similar sized notebooks:
| Notebook | Actual Weight |
| Dell Vostro 1000 (15.4″ screen, 4-cell battery) | 5.8lbs |
| Dell Vostro 1500 (15.4″ screen, 6-cell battery) | 6.75lbs |
| Dell Inspiron 1520 (15.4″ screen, 9-cell battery) | 7.4lbs |
| HP Pavilion dv6500t (15.4′ screen, 6-cell battery) | 6.10lbs |
| Sony VAIO FZ (15.4′ screen, 6-cell battery) | 5.62lbs |
It’s always good to consider how much a notebook weighs when you add in the power adapter for travel weight, here you can see that with the 4-cell battery and power adapter the total weight of the system comes to about 6.65lbs
Size-Up
Another interesting metric I like to look at is the dimensions of the notebook compared to similar notebooks.
| Notebook | Dimensions |
| Dell Vostro 1000 (15.4″ screen) | 14.02″ (W) x 1.42″ (max H) x 10.45″ (D) |
| Dell Vostro 1500 (15.4″ screen) | 14.12″ (W) x 1.65″ (max H) x 10.59″ (D) |
| HP Pavilion dv6500t (15.4′ screen) | 14.05″ (W) x 1′ - 1.69″ (max H) x 10.12″ (D) |
| Dell Inspiron 1520 (15.4′ screen) | 14.12 (W) x 1.47 - 1.65′ (H) x 10.59′ (D) |
| Sony VAIO FE (15.4′ screen) | 14.41′ (W) x 1.02′ -1.39′ (H) x 10.81′ (D) |
| Sony VAIO FZ (15.4′ screen) | 14″(W) x 0.98-1.4″(H) x 10.02″(D) |
The Vostro 1000 is overall smaller than the Vostro 1500, but it’s not as thin and sleek as the competing VAIO notebooks. Not that the Vostro 1000 was ever trying to be sleek!
Ports
The port selection for the Vostro 1500 is on par with other 15.4″ notebooks. Again I’ll compare it to what similar notebooks have so you get an idea of where it stands relative to competition:
| Ports | Vostro 1000 | HP dv6500t | Sony VAIO FZ |
| USB 2.0 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| FireWire | No | Yes | Yes |
| Media Card Reader | Yes (3-in-1) | 4-in-1 | Yes (MS and SD) |
| Ethernet | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Modem | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Headphone out | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microphone in | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Monitor out | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HDMI | No | Yes | Yes (optional) |
| DVI-D | No | No | No |
| S-Video | No | Yes | Yes |
| ExpressCard Slot | Yes (54mm) | Yes (34mm/54mm) | Yes (34mm) |
| PCMCIA Slot | No | No | No |
| Expansion Dock Port | No | Yes | No |
Unsurprisingly there are no high-definition video output ports such as HDMI, DVI or even so much as S-Video on the Vostro 1000. Though the Vostro 1000 doesn’t have a stunning array of ports, it at least offers all of the essentials and a generous four USB ports.
Let’s take a tour around the ports of the Vostro 1000 to see where they’re located:
Front side
On the front you just see the speakers and the latch on the lid. The latch is pretty cheap feeling, it’s made of plastic.
Left Side
On the left side you just have the optical drive, which can be either a DVD/CD-RW Combo or Dual Layer DVD+R write drive.
Right Side
On the right side you have the Express card 54mm slot, 3-in-1 media card reader, headphone out, microphone in and then two USB ports.
Back Side
On the back you have the power jack, Ethernet port, modem port, two more USB ports, and a monitor out port.
Performance
The AMD Turion and Sempron processor family is lacking when compared to the Intel Core 2 Duo offerings. It’s pretty amazing how AMD went from being competitive with its mobile processors 2 years ago to being almost stagnant and non-competitive today. They haven’t updated their mobile processors in quite some time.
However, if you’re not going to be using a laptop for high-end demanding work, then the cheaper AMD offerings might be just the right ticket. Dell obviously is able to sell the Vostro 1000 for cheaper because it contains a budget AMD processor. The AMD Sempron and Turion processors offered will run Office applications and web browsers just fine. If you’re a multi-tasking fiend and have several applications open at once, you might be upset by the performance of the processor, but if you’re more of a one task at a time person then it won’t make any difference to you if there’s an AMD Sempron 3000 processor or a much more expensive (and faster) Intel Core 2 Duo 2.20 GHz processor powering your laptop.
One thing that’s probably as important as the processor is getting enough memory. If you go with Windows XP I would say 1GB is the optimal amount of memory, but you could get away with just 512MB. If you’re running Windows Vista then you really want 2GB of memory, but you could get away with just 1GB. The Vostro 1000 under review has Windows XP installed. With 512MB of memory it runs ‘okay’, but it does lag a bit when opening programs or clicking on menus. If there was 1 ‘ 2GB of memory in this machine that lag would definitely go away.
The hard drive offerings for the Vostro 1000 range from 60GB ‘ 120GB. They’re all the same speed of 5400RPM, which is adequate. I’d go with 80GB or up for storage, if you think you’ll be storing a lot of videos and music then the 120GB size is preferable. If the only thing you’ll be storing is word docs, power point presentations and email then 80GB should be fine.
Some Benchmarks
It always helps to put some numbers to the perceived performance level. In the comparison table below, you’ll see that the Vostro 1000 doesn’t keep up with laptops that have faster internal components:
In the following benchmark the program Super Pi was used to force the processor to calculate the number Pi to 2 million digits of accuracy. The lower the score the better, as that equates to faster. The Vostro 1000 was much slower than the Intel based competitors.
WPrime is another program that forces the processor to do intense calculations, this time to calculate Prime numbers out to 32M. Again, lower scores (in seconds) mean faster performance:
HDTune was run to measure the disk drive performance, which was in line for what you’d expect from a 5400RPM hard drive:
Screen
The screen is a 15.4′ Widescreen XGA display (1280 x 800 resolution). XGA is the most standard resolution you can get with laptops, and suits most people. You can choose between a glossy screen finish and matte finish screen, the glossy finish is a $30 upgrade. If you plan on watching movies and prefer more vibrant and bold colors then go with the glossy screen. The only warning to heed with the glossy screen is that it is a lot more reflective, in a bright light setting you’ll see a lot of lights reflecting off the screen.
I got the matte finish screen. The brightness of the Vostro 1000 screen isn’t all that great, it’s certainly below average relative to other laptops. The other major flaw is the amount of light leakage you get from the bottom of the screen. If you look at some pictures I’ll took you’ll see a lot of the backlight bleeding from the bottom of the screen, this is especially noticeable when you’ve got a lot of dark colors on the screen.
Overall the Vostro 1000 screen is pretty bad in terms of quality, it’s not the worst screen I’ve seen but it’s far from the top. Obviously the LCD panel is a cheaper one, which is what you should expect to get for the price.
Keyboard
The keyboard is rather dull in its feel. The feedback from the keys isn’t very good and it seems as if some of these keys are just waiting to jump off. You can’t describe the keyboard as anything but cheap feeling. I’m a snob and very particular when it comes to keyboards though, others might not be so put off.
Touchpad
The touchpad itself works just fine, no real complaints there. The mouse buttons are clunky and cheap feeling, they’re not very pleasing to use.
Software
The really great thing about the Vostro 1000 is that it comes with very little bloatware. There were only 44 processes at startup out of the box. That’s literally half of the amount you’ll get on most consumer notebooks these days that are sold with a glut of ‘free’ software that you’ll never use and rather not have. Having such a clean system really helps with performance, it’s a beautiful thing not to see a bunch of garbage already on your new computer.
The other great news is that Dell provides all necessary recovery disks and drivers on disks. There’s no need to have to burn your own recovery disks like some manufacturers are now making you do.
Battery
There are three battery options for the Dell Vostro 1000: 4-cell, 6-cell or 9-cell. I purchased the cheapest option 4-cell 29WHr variety battery. I regret this because the 6-cell is only about a $20 upgrade and would have provided far better battery life. With brightness set to half way and wireless on and the system idling, the battery on the Vostro 1000 conked out after 1hour and 50 minutes. If you’re actually working on the notebook you can expect about 1h 30m of battery life. If you’re watching a movie with the screen at full brightness you’ll be lucky to get an hour of battery life out of the 4-cell.
I understand that the 6-cell battery provides almost 3 hours of battery life under normal usage, so I’d go with that option. The 6-cell will be slightly heavier, but that’s a worthwhile trade off for the longer battery life.
Audio
There are two front firing speakers on the Vostro 1000. As is typical for notebook speakers, the audio is very tinny and not pleasing to the ears. If you’re an audiophile you’ll find the speakers painful, if you’re not discriminating then the sound might be considered adequate. Using headphones will provide a much richer listening experience.
Noise level
The Vostro 1000 runs quietly, the size, plastic body and low power of the laptop all contribute to keeping this notebook quite cool so that the fan doesn’t have to run very often and thus keeps things quiet.
Conclusion
The Vostro 1000 is good for the price, though you certainly get what you pay for. The screen is middling, the keyboard mediocre, performance is ho-hum, and the build is all plastic and lacking quality. However, if all you’re looking for is a cheap laptop to sit on a desk and be used for productivity tasks such as Office applications and web surfing, then the Vostro 1000 will serve that need. At the end of the day I’d encourage most people to pay an extra $100 - $200 to upgrade to the better quality Vostro 1500, but if you’re on a tight budget then the Vostro 1000 is an okay buy for the price.
Pros
- The price is right, starting at under $500
- Easy to order and configure via Dell.com, quick delivery in under 10-days
- Very clean install of Windows without a bunch of garbage software
- You get all restore disks and necessary drivers on disks with the computer
- Works fine for general usage
Cons
- Made of plastic, not very resistant to hard knocks or drops that a laptop might take
- Screen is not very bright and suffers light leakage at the bottom
- Keyboard is somewhat clunky
- Not a computer meant for power users that game and do lots of multi-tasking
March 23rd, 2008 at 9:49 am
Nice read! When i bought my Vostro 1000, i was upgrading from an Inspiron B120.
This really is an excellent comp for basic use. I don’t use a PC for gaming or other high-end applications, just stuff like internet, disc burning and videos. For those needs the Vostro 1000 has all the bells & whistles plus a little more!
The outer casing may be all made of plastic, but it is quite sturdy and could probably take a hit well. Though no one in their right mind would be careless enough with their laptop to go dropping it and stuff.
Visually it might look bland to some with an all-black exterior, but i actually like the simple colorscheme, it has a very ‘optimized’ look to it. A plus side to this is its pretty easy to fix up any scratches it may get, nothing a jet-black marker can’t fix and then it looks like new again. Can’t say the same for others comps on the market with their louder, shiny colors.
I disagree somewhat about the screen. I’ve browsed the net on various friend’s higher-end model laptops, and the LCD on the Vostro looked almost just as good. Their might be a bit of light bleed but you won’t really notice it unless your in a pitch dark room. Its not the best but the LCD is of Nice quality, and way better than what my old Inspiron B120 had.
Overall as far as today’s basic laptops go, the vostro 1000 is more than up to spec. Can’t beat the price either, i highly recommend it to other comp users out there who desire a solid, yet basic laptop solution.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:27 am
Hay guys do anyone know what is the sound chip found in vostro 1000, According to my research on the drivers it uses a SIGMATEL sound chip but i also found in a notebook review site that the sound chip is a CONEXTANT one. If you are using vostro 1000 then please do reply what is the sound chip.
About lcd panels i do not know what brand it is. there are many less expensive chinese panel brands such as AUO, CHIMEI, CHUNGWA. I hope it has a samsung panel but i got to wait till i get one.
If any of you know what is the exact detailed specification of the lap then do reply me.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I’m the same “laptop user” that made that first post above. My particular Vostro 1000, which i still love by the way, shows that the audio is a SIGMATEL in the system device manager.
I could not find anything on what the LCD maker is though. For what its worth, my screen is still looking/functioning GREAT. As for any light bleeding, like i said above, unless you spend a lot of time using it in a completely pitch-dark room, you’re NOT going to notice it(if any).
August 1st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The review was tremendously helpful. I don’t have my Vostro 1000 yet (it’s coming) but the evaluation put all my fears to rest. It seems that it will fill my bill perfectly since I only do e-mails, the Internet and compose things like speeches. I was particularly happy to get info about battery life. My Vostro is coming with a 6 cell.
Thanks to Jason Flickner
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I found this computer to be a bad buy. I am a hard working student and this computer definitely does not meet my needs. After two weeks of having it I recieved the blue screen of death and Dell refuses to fix the problem despite my extended warranty. I would definitely suggest spending a little more money and buying a higher quality computer.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I don’t know what problems or operations you tried to do with it that caused the blue screen of death, all i can say is my Vostro 1000, which i’ve owned for close to 8 months now as my only computer. The hardware continues to be Rock-Solid with no problems whatsoever. I still recommend it as highly as i did in my first post above. Maybe you just got a bad unit.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I bought a Vostro 1000 for my wife a few months ago from Dell’s outlet site (outlet.dell.com). For under $350 shipped we received a refurbished 1000 with the base specs mentioned above. I added 1GB of RAM for ~$35 and replaced Vista Home with Linux Mint. My wife loves this system and it’s absolutely fine for the few hours a week my wife uses it. Vostro 1000s under $400 don’t appear on the outlet site very often, but they’re there now and then (especially late at night).
August 19th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Yeah, “Vostro User”? If you get the blue screen of death… restart your computer. There’s no need to bother Dell with a Windows software problem. -_-’
August 28th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I’ve had my Vostro 1000 for about a year and it is a heavy tank of a laptop. (I have developed a definite love/hate relationship with MS Vista too, but that’s a nearly separate story) That being said I have to say that this thing has taken a beating flying around the US and still works well. The wireless modem never fails to find access, I still get a solid hour and a half to 2 hours out of the battery, and the old truck never seems to fail to boot up. I’ve kicked it off the bed, thrown it in the overhead, and stepped on it at band practice and this thing refuses to quit.
As for apps, I fly MS office, some simple DVD burning software and, of course my ipod/itunes software; these are not too complex for the Sempron processor. It chugs right through.
If I had to buy this thing again I would get XP, as the learning curve vs. frustration level for Vista is too long comparitively. Also I pack a second detachable drive for some large picture and music files to keep the Vostro’s hard drive free for DVD and music burning. Also get at least 2 gig of RAM. Buying the extra RAM up front is cheaper and insures you’re getting the most out of your OS and applications.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 pm
We got our Vostro 1000 about 2 month ago. We use a laptop only on vacation for internet, email and Office 2007. It has worked great and the wi-fi card always finds a connection. Price and quality have been more then expected. WE BOUGHT OURS WITH SEVERAL FREE OR NEAR FREE UPGRADES, 2 gb ram, 6 cell battery and 120 mb HD. Priced with tax and shipping at $545l can’t do better then that. We fully recommend this laptop.
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 am
On Aug 7 I mentioned buying a refurbed Vostro 1000 for my wife about a year ago. I liked it so much that I bought another for myself, this one with an Athlon 64-bit processor, DVD-RW, 2GB of RAM and 160GB HD and battery upgrade for $499, including free shipping. For my own use I wanted a bit faster processor than the Sempron in my wife’s 1000, and Dell had a special deal for free shipping on new 1000s priced at $499. The cheapest Sempron reburbs seem to be close to $399 with shipping. If you want the lowest possible price, look for refurbished units, but if you want to move up in specs then check specials on new 1000s as sometimes these are a slightly better deal. As with my wife’s 1000, I wiped Vista Home from the hard drive and installed Linux Mint (5.0). I had to boot in a safe graphics mode and then use the included Envy utility to load ATI drivers to get the native resolution, and a Windows driver from Dell’s site was needed to get wireless going, but both were easy. We’re a two-Vostro 1000/Linux Mint family and we’re both very happy.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I purchased my Vostro 1000 less than a year ago and it works perfectly fine. I got the middle option that comes with 1GB RAM and 120GB hard drive. I got it for sale for $400.
For that price, it is a decent laptop and I find nothing wrong with the cheap plastic build or the keyboard. Audio quality may be lacking, but that’s why I have an iPod and expensive headphones. So far it’s perfect for my high school use and I definitely plan to upgrade before I go off to college.
Only problem I find is that the battery life sucks ass because I got the cheapest one available. I would like to buy a new one but I’ll eventually buy a new laptop within the next year anyway. I’ll keep this in case one of those “nice” laptops ever break (which always happens the DAY after the warranty expires).
December 14th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I have a Voro 1000 notebok computer and its a great computer. I think just becaus one person had an bad experience with a Vostro 1000 notebook computer, they expect everyone too. My computer does not give me any trouble at al, and I would reccomend this computer to others. It fits my budet, plus for all the people who thinks a high end computer is better, thats because they are saying that becaue it cost more, or because of the design it has to offer, but in my opinon, what looks good-like the highend noteook computers, don’t aways be good.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
i am using vostro 1000 for 1 year.i always feel discomfort with the screen.now i am facing some eye problems,blurring,headache.i think the glare of the screen is not good.i have doubt is it lcd screen or nt!!
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
I have had my Vostro 1000 for only a year and the battery has already died and need to replace it. I’m not too happy about that! Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggestions on getting Dell to replace it at no charge? If so, how and where? Help!
April 4th, 2009 at 7:52 am
i have a problem with my labtop (vestro 1000)
the problem is within the keyboard
when i try to print, some keys does not print the correct character
its print the character seems in blue color.
what i can do?
is it hardware or software problem?
but when i use USB keboard, i dont have any problem.
please helpe me to solve it.
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
We are happy with our system, fast enough, only really an email send/receiver with some Skyping.
My problem is our large ALT key popped off. I got it back on but it is not seating properly sits with the back end up.
Any suggestions as to how to re-seat?
May 2nd, 2009 at 6:55 am
I’m a college student and this laptop has worked out well for me. I’ve had it for almost 2 years and it’s run great. It started with win xp and 1 gig (2x 512). I’ve never had any problems (save a virus, but i was able to reinstall windows no problem with the dell disks). The outside may look a bit plain, but that’s fine by me. It hides fingerprints and scratches well.
My only complaint is that… well, actually nothing for the price. I should have bought a bigger hard drive (though i have an external one). I might be upgrading my ram soon. My battery still runs great. With the brightness turned down you can get almost two hours out of it. Overall a great laptop for the price.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 am
I am very comfortable with vostro 1000 model. My boyfriend gave this to me as a gift. I’ve been using this for almost a year now and its not giving me any trouble or problem. There is one thing I would like to ask. How can I get enye letter? In some computers i just have to use Alt 164 for small letter n so i can have enye and Alt 165 for N (capital enye). How can i have these letters in vostro 1000? Thank you in advance.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:40 am
I’ve been using this laptop for almost a year and a half now,seemingly aware with what features it has,however I’m extremely delighted with the performance it delivers so far.Overall it’s a superb laptop for the price.
P.S : No heating issues at all.
July 20th, 2009 at 9:10 am
So I’ve just Googled “keys jumping off vostro” and found this article. You say that you feel as if the keys want to jump off the keyboard…and you’re right - they actually do jump off. I was furiously typing earlier when my ‘L’ key jumped a couple of centimetres in the air and landed on my mousepad. It was easy enough to click back on but I’m really starting to wonder about this 1710.
July 21st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I have had my Vostro 1000 about a year and I agree about the battery!
It will only hold for about 15 minutes so there goes the reason for having a
laptop - having not to PLUG IT IN! I did buy a converter for the car and boat
but it only juices up when the motor is running.
I am also having trouble with typing speed - the computer doesn’t keep up
with my typing (I have to wait to see what has been typed ) Also cannot
change type, size and color in my emails anymore. I click on the color button but
when I start to scroll it disapears
October 27th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I have a Vostro 1000….no problems with the laptop itself, but the battery sure is an issue. About $150 to replace the battery after only a year of normal use. Quite a lot to spend every year, given the laptop was only about $550. To those who have typing speed issues with the computer not keeping up with the typing…that is a bad battery issue. Take the bad battery out….plug it in and type away. My laptop is now a desktop….cause I refuse to keep buying a new battery for that thing. I’ll give it to the kids and get a new one that is actually a laptop.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Hi,
good review. Thanks.
Do you know of compatible processors and a good place to get them. I want to upgrade mine to a 64 bit dual core.
Thanks