I've got an Inspiron 8200 from winter 2002 sitting right next to me. Apart from a 1.8 GHz P4m and a Radeon 9000 mobile it also features a 15" 1600*1200 display...which was just as amazing for its time as the 9100's TFT two years later.
I've got the Inspiron XPS from this same generation, and it really did have a great screen. The audio quality also beat everything on the market at the time. That subwoofer really made a huge difference. But the poor thing was so heavy that it would press itself into any semi-soft surface, which killed the audio lol. This machine was easy to work on though, which I appreciated.
I had one of these laptops in 2004, ran Firefox, took it on UA-cam, did video editing and physics sumulations, and it ran super-smooth. I think it's a testament to how inefficient modern web browsers and websites are that it struggles trying to do exactly the same stuff with new software.
@@martinofidacaro2281 "inefficient", not "insufficient"; that is, instead of optimizing and making things widely accessible regardless of hardware, they just expect the user to have beefy enough hardware to run whatever they throw at them.
either they were tight on space or the battery was heavy enough to make the subwoofer sound more rich because subwoofers do need a heavy case to make them sound way better than they do without one or a cheap one i honestly think it was pretty smart although when the battery dies you either need to get a new one or you won't have a subwoofer
@WolframaticAlpha Rumors even have it that upcoming iPhones won't even have a charging port, instead using some new "smart connector" Apple proprietary thing - and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they eventually drop that and only allow charging via wireless. Seriously, Apple just sucks.
@@jeffb.6642 sounds like a way to dodge new EU regulations. "Charging ports must use standard USB? Well this isn't a charging port, it's a special smart port that happens to also support charging!"
Pentiium 4s and intel in general was a failure back then like it is now AMD was like 2 years ahead while the even made there first athlon 64 and then intel bought the technology then intel recovered till 2007 pentium 4s specially presscots whats made just to cook eggs on
@@dmtd2388 and the worst thing is that Intel perfectly knew that their NetBurst architecture was horrible, and their own Pentium M was miles ahead of Pentium 4. However, NetBurst allowed for higher clock speeds, which gave Intel a marketing advantage so that they could sell their crap to naive customers who still believed that higher clock speees were equal to higher performance.
I'm super impressed by the display, for the most part. I was not aware that Full-HD displays of that form factor existed around 2004, especially in a consumer device. I remember 2004 being the time when the initial transition to HD (mostly 720p) flatscreens started, and the early ones weren't super duper flat. (We actually used a CRT TV in the living room until 2009 or so.) Anyway, impressive laptop. Ridiculous hardware and a fun thing to look at. Thanks, LGR!
Dell and a few companies have been doing this for a long time, years ago I had a pentium 3 633mhz dell laptop that had 1600x1200 res display factory installed
The top half looks exactly like my slightly older Inspiron 8600 and the bottom looks like the bottom of Dell's later Inspiron 6000 and the similar-design models which came later. It really is like they built it to look like two laptops.
I had this thing. I'm really surprised to see a review of it, I had always assumed this thing was pretty under the radar and nobody had it. Or at least it was way more expensive than it was worth. In 2004, I was going to college and spent my savings on this thing. Mine had 512 MB RAM. Lasted me a very long time. Software and browsers of its era had no problems; everything was fast. Games of the era were good enough. I have really such nice memories of using it as a laptop during the coldest days of winter and being toasty warm.
I bet that thing would've been nice and warm in the winter. The moment he mentioned it running hot, I thought "Cats would be ALL OVER this thing, sitting on the keyboard for hours on end".
@@MadameSomnambulehuh now that you mention it liek that I can easily imagien that as ive liked bacj as a kid when playing a game console like a 7th gen console itd be cozy when a little chilly to put my hand hpbehind it and feel the lovely warmth fwiw idk why bruh but ai was too dumb to just grab a blanket and take a break after playing fir hours hehehe man nostalgia though so much nostalgiw of the early 10s on seventh gen consoles
I was an on-site sell tech for 10 years , I serviced many of these. Changing the thermal grease from silicone to an artic silver or modern thermal compound will do wonders. The silicone didn't bond or cool well, and burned off over time
Dude!!!! I saw the thumbnail and I was like , hey , my laptop. Bought it practically new and still works perfectly . It’s gone from my primary gaming machine long ago , To my vintage gaming machine for a minute until I actually built a retro rig. It’s my little old soldier that’s never failed me
@@kyria_kous I have two and yes it can just barely, miserably, run Crysis. It's playable if you had an average gaming pc when crysis came out, which means you knew 15-20FPS was "acceptable" back then in Crysis. lol.
I had the base configuration of this laptop while in college. That laptop from 2004 has a higher resolution than any of the other monitors in my house 16 years later.
I wish 1920x1200 would be more common nowadays. Or 2560x1600, that would be the perfect one to scale up retro stuff and also give tons of desktop space.
"...making this just about the most awesome laptop battery ever made!" "...well, expect for the fact that they had a tendency to overheat and potentially cause fires, leading to a recall of 2.7 million units in 2006. Whoops!" Gotta love this dry delivery of humor!
Completely unrelated to this wonderful machine, but I MUST tell you this story. So, recently I was browsing the web for Duke Nukem and came across a Russian article from 2006 about some sort of a fan-made expansion or something along those lines. And it literally said "Duke was voiced by some random guy called Clint Basinger, who has a very similar voice to the original" This is so hilarious 😆
I had a friend buy this exact model as he went to college. This was right when dell added the accident insurance- that he didn't choose... And should have. The guy set up an aquarium above his laptop and of course spilled water all over it within the first month at being at school.
pretty impressed with how well it handled youtube, considering that even some modern superbudget machines don't do it that well. Amazing to see both how far and how not far we've come in almost 20 years.
We've improved a metric ton in efficiency. Our phones can handle 4k youtube playback using under 10 watts. This ancient beast may be able to run youtube pretty well, but likely using 80+ watts to do it.
I'm surprised UA-cam can run on such an old browser. I expected it to just complain that the system is too old to support its modern -DRM schemes- video codecs and JavaScript stuff.
I had one of these! It was an amazing laptop with a power brick almost the same size as the laptop... and it was suprising how much the little 1" subwoofer made a difference to the sound.
Nowadays these damn full-soldered things are like meant to be disposable when broken... If they're not welded shut you're already in repair heaven. They probably just don't coat everything on epoxy to impede any and all repairs cause it would likely be costlier and result in better water resistance, so break less.
Oh Wow! I was a technician at an engineering firm in the mid 2000's that bought all Dell's and we had some of these. Those things were tanks! I got to give Dell some kudos because those machines were built well and we could service them ourselves and they lasted a long time. We used ours until 2011!
@@vikeghawlimz965 we used the heck out of them, by the late 2000s we tasked the older machines like these to be lab machines that run Certain engineering equipment like CNC and testing systems that didn't require a lot of horsepower to run!
Yep, scaling wasn't a thing back then, the higher you went with the resolution, the harder it was to read text (and other problems), because it wouldn't scale with the resolution, that you choose. The only solution was to adjust it all by yourself, when you had chosen a higher resolution (if your screen and gpu had allowed it)
I had this machine back in '04. It was great at all the multimedia stuff I had to get done at uni and gaming was a dream. Loved being able to play Doom 3 wherever I went. Miss that laptop.
When I saw my old laptop on screen, I smiled. When he said "Thanks to John" for the donation, I freaked out and tracked down my Inspiron to make sure I still had it lol Lots of good memories playing Age of Empires III, SW Empire at War, and Need for Speed Carbon; All with better graphics than our desktop at the time! What a coinkydink, glad I caught this vid.
I serviced a TON of these back in 2004 and onwards. I still have one of those floppy disk modules. It has a mini-USB on the side and I occasionally use it with my Mac to read 3,5” disks. Yeah, it looks ridiculous.
By the way I've been curious about laptop floppy drives for a while, what interface does it use to link up to the PC? Is it the same 40 pin IDE the optical drives use somehow?
@@Kalvinjj I don’t know what the D/Bay interface really was and can’t remember if it was the same as a regular optical drive. I don’t have my floppy drive handy right now.
@@simontay4851 No you’re right. I worked at a center that serviced all consumer Dells sold in Sweden but I probably didn’t service that many of this specific model. It was a figure of speech.
NO WAY! I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR SPEED BUSTERS FOR SO LONG! I had the faintest childhood memory of an Ubisoft racing game where on a specific map there was a t-rex walking through a narrow hallway with a car in its mouth(which is the California map), but nobody could pinpoint it, ever. Everyone just said I was thinking of Re-Volt, but I knew that wasn't the game. Thank you so much LGR, I'm off to have an amazing time reliving childhood memories. I never thought I'd find this game, this is an insane saturday!
@@yodasmomisondrugs7959 doom 3 made the change in PC made that pcs on that time sometimes can put all power in effects and lighting exploding the potential
This might seem like a strange comment, but thank you for "timing" the ads correctly. I HATE it when they randomly cut in the middle of footage, especially since most of the time when the video resumes it "rewinds" a couple of seconds.
I had one of these, loved it! ( got it used for $300 in 2008) My only issue was when I had to replace the battery. The battery was about 3x the price of a normal battery
I had this laptop in college...I even had that mouse! I also learned the hard way after I thought my laptop was bricked...that it was really easy to loosen the hard drive without realizing it, preventing booting.
Wow, this brings back memories. I got one of these given to me in high school by a tutor as an incentive to get a perfect score in the year end trigonometry test. I still remember the countless hours of Counter strike and playing Half-Life 2 at 18-25 fps.
It would also play World of Warcraft better than any of my friend's laptops in school. Granted you had to carry it around with a flatbed truck, but it was okay... I was proud lol
@@mickeymouse12678 It was his old laptop, he just bought a new one and the one he gave me was already a few years old. It also had some cheap, no name, aftermarket ram installed. I'm pretty sure he didn't spend $4800 on it. It was still the most expensive thing anyone has ever given to me though.
As the Athlon came out in the 2000's I switched to AMD as well and with this 1GHz (wooooht) machine I was the king on LAN partys... at least for half a year
The Athlon T-Bird and P3 Coppermine were pretty much on par, but AMD was so much cheaper. Then Intel decided NetBurst makes for a good heater and AMD did amazing with Tbred-A, and especially Barton.
Wow those XP screens bring back a lot of memories. Sometimes I just prayed to see that XP screen come up. Computers weren't so reliable back then. Thanks for the video!
Had this laptop back in college. It was a beast and requires me to buy an extra large bag to carry it. I was able to play warcraft 3 on this and that completely blew my mind at the time
i got this screensaver on a Windows XP media center vm, in wanted to copy it and when i executed it on my "real" computer a message says "this screensaver only works with Windows XP media center". sad :(
I was so stunned by the memories this video brought back that I forgot to congratulate you on the absolutely fabulous cinematic quality this video has. It's just beautiful to watch! Great work!
My 2020 Inspiron has a terrible screen. It depends more on price than anything else, although no amount of money will get you good support for your laptop anymore. If your laptop breaks, prepare to be on the phone for hours.
I have one of these! It is unquestionably a “desktop replacement”, you might suffer knee injuries if you tried using this brick on your lap for any length of time.
I had a similar laptop in 2005, only the GPU wasn’t as powerful. But the same cpu. My battery only lasted 45 minuets so it’s even worse than this one lol. It’s got 3 fans, built in subwoofer. It’s got a media centre that I could listen to music on the laptop without having to boot up windows lol. It came with an IR remote to control the music from farther away (if you consider 1 foot max range away far away lol)
My current PC is either worse or the same as this old laptop Intel core 2 duo e6550 2.33ghz 2gb ram ddr2 64mb vram intergrated chipset 256gb hdd Windows 7 Ultimate
Holy crap, when that MasterWorks logo popped up I had flashbacks to playing Uz as a kid! The nostalgia thickened the second I saw those hyper-realistic 3D shapes. I never knew MasterWorks had made another game, but I do know what I'm doing today
I remember these times...our family had our first laptop circa 2005. It felt like such a ridiculously special thing. Pretty sure it got replaced a couple years later because it just became unbearably slow and the battery gave out. This one's completely nuts though, but it's fun to see we had been trying to replace desktops as early as '04.
I had one of these when it was new. It served me well at home and at many LAN parties. It also cut off the blood supply to my lower legs when I used it on my lap. Good times :)
I owned the XPS version of this for a brief period in 2009 (I actually traded a similarly speced P4 desktop for it) and it was an experience I will never forget, worked great too, until a fan died without my knowledge and the overtemp protection failed to shut it off, so it cooked itself.
Well, it’s easy to do in such a huge and heavy laptop. Today with USB C I really only need one port to plug in my hub with HDMI, USB ports, power and stuff. You can just assign any key combination for volume and media stuff, much easier to reach. Considering the battery run times of modern laptops I can live with non-removable batteries. After a few years it might drop to 70% capacity or so but that still gives you hours of run time.
@@Mike-oz4cv yeah but why you gotta buy a fucking hub tho.. like my MSI laptop from 2016 has 2 usb3.0 and 1 usb2.0 ports, usbc, hdmi, ethernet and some stuff i don't know about
@@grootsChannel I plugged in all the cables of my old Thinkpad multiple times a day for years because I was too stingy to get the expensive Thinkpad docking station. For my new Thinkpad with USB C I got a simple USB C hub for 40€ and now I only have to plug in a single cable. It still has the same ports you listed but I don’t actually need them.
I loved mine that I had gotten second hand in 2008. It was a perfect upgrade coming from an Inspiron 1100 (smaller but also used a desktop processor!). I was rocking this thing still in college back in 2012, running Windows 7 Ultimate and connecting it up to projectors in class for presentations. I also made my own aluminum-shim mod to increase the cooling of the graphics card as well as used the SpeedFan app for Dell Inspiron's back in the day to make the cooling the most efficient while also staying very quiet. I'd say one of my most favorite laptops for back then even in 2012. It's hard plastics also allowed for plenty of bumps and bangs haha!
I remember getting my 17" 9200 with discrete GPU for $1600 in early 2005. Other than Dell using a crappy hinge which eventually killed the screen, it was a pretty awesome, though massive laptop.
Holy shit hyper bowl. I thought playing that was a fever dream I had as a child. I didn't know it was on our computer and I guess I had just come across it by accident but I think it was only a demo
Because CPUs now are significantly faster and stand the test of time better. Finally good for audio processing and gaming since 10 years ago with Sandy Bridge (i7-2600K as example). In 2017, Ryzen 7 1700 came out and significantly improved the availability for high core count CPUs. Now we have high core count CPUs that are pretty good for productivity and still can game pretty well. Modern GPUs can handle real time light simulation or path traced lighting too and AI processing in hardware. Back then in the Pentium 4 era, CPUs were so bad that you still needed an audio card or external hardware, forget using them for a Digital Audio Workstation or getting insane framerates in games (even console emulators).
My grandfather gifted me this laptop in 2006's Christmas It was almost fully upgraded, I had to upgrade the ram and the HHD myself He said he got it for 2400-2600$ (maybe it got cheaper with time) And guess what, I'm still use it as my secondary laptop
I had one of these! But it was blue on the outside as well. Honestly a great machine. I remember I was able to run World of Warcraft on it and it ran surprisingly well. The heat was real though. It would cook itself to death if you put on any kind of fabric.
Man, you should do a video on Dell's site and their build your computer interface. I remember spending so much time on there crafting my dream setups back in the day.
You are so right. The old school Dell component selector was INCREDIBLE. Same as you, I could spend hours just configuring and pricing out slightly different component options to meet a budget - which I did do, working as a university I.T. tech back in 2004-2008. These days, Dell's configurator is BARELY better than Apple's "screw you and your options, we don't care" website. It's really sad. But of course, corporations operate based on consumer interest. The vast majority of people didn't care about Dell's fancy super-configurator. So, year by year, its options were stripped away, leaving us with the skeleton we have now.
Midtown Madness footage is so nostalgic to me, it was the first game I played with my brand new Microsoft Precision Wheel back in the day. And for the record, the wheel still works perfectly fine to this day.
@@warachito I wish they still update winamp and make remastered skin or something, btw still using it on Windows XP retro vm nothing special just bunch of good ol games and some mp3s from childhood which i listen on winamp :)
OMG! Had one of those (not sure exact model though) but this surely brings back memory... Remember a lots of Unreal Tournament battles with my colleagues back then too! Thanks again for your epic videos making working from home less lonesome!
It's trippy watching this footage, esp the 3dmarks benchmark, where I know I've stared at that damn benchmark for ages back in the day and yet I couldn't remember parts of it, fascinating the blanks that generate in memory over time.
I got my first laptop in 2004. It was a Toshiba Satellite A50 computer with "Intel Centrino". It actually had a 1.6 GHz Pentium M processor and a terrible Intel GME graphics adapter. I enjoyed the crap out of that computer. I used it everyday at school and then gamed on in the afternoon - though we also had a desktop for more involved games. And that thing worked for 6 years as my main computer. I really loved that thing, much as it frustrated me. I still have it, though it is in rough shape.
I had one of these! I even had the 256mb 9800 from the XPS as offered through some special sale. It was great for a few years until the thermal past broke down - there was eventually a class action suit over these because the thermal paste broke down in only 2-3 years, causing it to throttle to about 300mhz shortly after boot. Still have fond memories of staying up to 5am on this thing my freshman year, and it was my first taste of HD.
I just redid my thermal paste today. There was none. The pentium had fused itself to the heatsink... Way to go Dell! I wonder were al. their revenue from this machine went lol
@@nathanaelhood7699 Honestly an IHS fused to the heatsink probably gets better thermal performance than paste, assuming it's properly fused together and didn't destroy the chip in the process.
@@MrMattumbo yeah it probably does lol. it might have been best to just leave it like it was, but I didn't... only problem though, the chip socket is designed for the chip to be removed so it was halfway stuck in there. fortunately I was able to remove it without destroying the socket.
I really wish laptops were this serviceable today. So accessible that you don't even have to unscrew the bottom of the device to get at the RAM, hard drive etc.
Can we appreciate that it had a FULL HD display....in '04!! That is like having an 8K display in a laptop display today.
yeah
I've got an Inspiron 8200 from winter 2002 sitting right next to me. Apart from a 1.8 GHz P4m and a Radeon 9000 mobile it also features a 15" 1600*1200 display...which was just as amazing for its time as the 9100's TFT two years later.
Not all that uncommon to have 1024 res on displays from that era tbh.
Yeah no kidding. Hell, good luck even finding a laptop with 1440p display these days
I've got the Inspiron XPS from this same generation, and it really did have a great screen. The audio quality also beat everything on the market at the time. That subwoofer really made a huge difference. But the poor thing was so heavy that it would press itself into any semi-soft surface, which killed the audio lol. This machine was easy to work on though, which I appreciated.
I had one of these laptops in 2004, ran Firefox, took it on UA-cam, did video editing and physics sumulations, and it ran super-smooth. I think it's a testament to how inefficient modern web browsers and websites are that it struggles trying to do exactly the same stuff with new software.
@matheusm6346 Goanna is a gecko fork. the current from scratch independent web engine you should look at is Ladybird LibWeb
What do you mean they are insufficient? Aren't the new laptops 10x better than old ones like this searching the web and doing everything else?
@@martinofidacaro2281 ....yes?
@@martinofidacaro2281 "inefficient", not "insufficient"; that is, instead of optimizing and making things widely accessible regardless of hardware, they just expect the user to have beefy enough hardware to run whatever they throw at them.
Nothing to do with "inefficient".
This is legit the most 2004 thing I've ever seen.
I didn't expect to see you here
@@Pasi123 reality is collapsing and melding all the youtubers together
You got out of that place just in time, how's the family.
@@Pasi123 ayy my dude
Omg are you a LGR fan?
A speaker inside a battery. Now that’s what you call engineering.
In software we call that tightly coupled. Which is generally a bad thing. But hey that battery wont fit in any other machine anyway so why tf not.
either they were tight on space or the battery was heavy enough to make the subwoofer sound more rich because subwoofers do need a heavy case to make them sound way better than they do without one or a cheap one i honestly think it was pretty smart although when the battery dies you either need to get a new one or you won't have a subwoofer
@@astronichols1900 Tight coupling is always a bad thing if it can be avoided. I was being sarcastic obviously.
except that the speaker is taking up room for more battery capacity which explains why the battery couldn't last 2 hours
“I love ports”
ok guess that’s why we don’t see apple products on this channel
It’s a shame though, they used to pride themselves on all the IO they included. Times sure have changed
@Ethan Ansell this is fine
@WolframaticAlpha Rumors even have it that upcoming iPhones won't even have a charging port, instead using some new "smart connector" Apple proprietary thing - and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they eventually drop that and only allow charging via wireless. Seriously, Apple just sucks.
@WolframaticAlpha I would never buy a laptop without USB-A ports.
@@jeffb.6642 sounds like a way to dodge new EU regulations. "Charging ports must use standard USB? Well this isn't a charging port, it's a special smart port that happens to also support charging!"
The fire extinguisher and the "this is fine" wallpaper was a great joke
He said it perfectly timed to I loled there XD
Pentiium 4s and intel in general was a failure back then like it is now AMD was like 2 years ahead while the even made there first athlon 64 and then intel bought the technology then intel recovered till 2007 pentium 4s specially presscots whats made just to cook eggs on
@@dmtd2388 and the worst thing is that Intel perfectly knew that their NetBurst architecture was horrible, and their own Pentium M was miles ahead of Pentium 4. However, NetBurst allowed for higher clock speeds, which gave Intel a marketing advantage so that they could sell their crap to naive customers who still believed that higher clock speees were equal to higher performance.
@@АлексейГриднев-и7р By the way wasn't Pentium M architecture like Pentium III based?
@@АлексейГриднев-и7р yea i know
I'm super impressed by the display, for the most part. I was not aware that Full-HD displays of that form factor existed around 2004, especially in a consumer device. I remember 2004 being the time when the initial transition to HD (mostly 720p) flatscreens started, and the early ones weren't super duper flat. (We actually used a CRT TV in the living room until 2009 or so.)
Anyway, impressive laptop. Ridiculous hardware and a fun thing to look at. Thanks, LGR!
I remember thick flat-screens in the late 90s and wondering what could possibly be any better
@@Linuxpunk81 *_Nothing._*
Dell and a few companies have been doing this for a long time, years ago I had a pentium 3 633mhz dell laptop that had 1600x1200 res display factory installed
I had an inspiron 8600 and it's probably still the nicest laptop display I've ever had.
Dell have always been ahead of time when it comes to laptop displays.
From the front it looks like a laptop sitting on top of a laptop
Yo dawg, we heard you like laptops, so we put a laptop on your laptop xD
The top half looks exactly like my slightly older Inspiron 8600 and the bottom looks like the bottom of Dell's later Inspiron 6000 and the similar-design models which came later. It really is like they built it to look like two laptops.
When I first saw mine I thought (hoped) it was a laptop sitting on top of a docking station.
With the amount of ports you'd be forgiven to think it's another laptop 💻
I had this thing. I'm really surprised to see a review of it, I had always assumed this thing was pretty under the radar and nobody had it. Or at least it was way more expensive than it was worth. In 2004, I was going to college and spent my savings on this thing. Mine had 512 MB RAM. Lasted me a very long time. Software and browsers of its era had no problems; everything was fast. Games of the era were good enough. I have really such nice memories of using it as a laptop during the coldest days of winter and being toasty warm.
I bet that thing would've been nice and warm in the winter. The moment he mentioned it running hot, I thought "Cats would be ALL OVER this thing, sitting on the keyboard for hours on end".
@@MadameSomnambulehuh now that you mention it liek that I can easily imagien that as ive liked bacj as a kid when playing a game console like a 7th gen console itd be cozy when a little chilly to put my hand hpbehind it and feel the lovely warmth fwiw idk why bruh but ai was too dumb to just grab a blanket and take a break after playing fir hours hehehe man nostalgia though so much nostalgiw of the early 10s on seventh gen consoles
I was an on-site sell tech for 10 years , I serviced many of these. Changing the thermal grease from silicone to an artic silver or modern thermal compound will do wonders. The silicone didn't bond or cool well, and burned off over time
Hey, old post but. thank you for posting this, i just got one and will be doing this as a quality of life improvement.
Dude!!!! I saw the thumbnail and I was like , hey , my laptop. Bought it practically new and still works perfectly . It’s gone from my primary gaming machine long ago , To my vintage gaming machine for a minute until I actually built a retro rig. It’s my little old soldier that’s never failed me
Mine was a champ also! I think I had one issue with a key or keyboard and Dell sent me a whole new one.
haha i just asking. any tips for earning money? lol
@@kyria_kous I have two and yes it can just barely, miserably, run Crysis. It's playable if you had an average gaming pc when crysis came out, which means you knew 15-20FPS was "acceptable" back then in Crysis. lol.
Sounds a lot like the story of our old inspiron 1300
I had the same reaction. I loved this thing and used it for many years. Heavy but great machine.
I had the base configuration of this laptop while in college. That laptop from 2004 has a higher resolution than any of the other monitors in my house 16 years later.
I wish 1920x1200 would be more common nowadays. Or 2560x1600, that would be the perfect one to scale up retro stuff and also give tons of desktop space.
@@HappyBeezerStudios 13 inch MacBooks have a 2560x1600 panel (1280x800 @ 2x), although things might be a bit tiny and then it *is* a MacBook, haha
@@HappyBeezerStudios Yeah, 16:10 never caught on once 16:9 TVs became mainstream.
"...making this just about the most awesome laptop battery ever made!"
"...well, expect for the fact that they had a tendency to overheat and potentially cause fires, leading to a recall of 2.7 million units in 2006. Whoops!"
Gotta love this dry delivery of humor!
Yeah, and the next part with the "this is fine" as wallpaper and a fire extinguisher at the side was the cherry on top.
@@chrll Yeah, this too. This detail went over my head when I was writing this...
Completely unrelated to this wonderful machine, but I MUST tell you this story. So, recently I was browsing the web for Duke Nukem and came across a Russian article from 2006 about some sort of a fan-made expansion or something along those lines. And it literally said "Duke was voiced by some random guy called Clint Basinger, who has a very similar voice to the original" This is so hilarious 😆
Clint Basinger, as random as it gets.
Some random guy xD
I notice the lights dim and the electric meter spin like Clark Griswold's house at Christmas time when that thing booted up...
can you dynotest the amp that drives the "sound system" in this laptop?
just kidding, would be funny though.
@@Ingvehetland ha, that would be cool! I bet it's only a watt or two
@@wal yeah, don't think your xs batteries and rows upon rows of caps can handle such power 😂
Here to appreciate your 69 likes before they increase further
Never expected to find a big dummy in this comment section.
I had a friend buy this exact model as he went to college. This was right when dell added the accident insurance- that he didn't choose... And should have. The guy set up an aquarium above his laptop and of course spilled water all over it within the first month at being at school.
@Arnold Rimmer clearly the aquarium
There are worst display than this one on a laptop being sold today.
There are hundreds of models selling with 768p TN sceen
@Adam Khan Ah, the "let's put in one hi-tech gimmick and fill the rest with crap to keep costs down" school of design.
HP says hi
Apple macbook air
I HATE! 1366x768
pretty impressed with how well it handled youtube, considering that even some modern superbudget machines don't do it that well. Amazing to see both how far and how not far we've come in almost 20 years.
We've improved a metric ton in efficiency.
Our phones can handle 4k youtube playback using under 10 watts.
This ancient beast may be able to run youtube pretty well, but likely using 80+ watts to do it.
@@CariHere You're right, I imagine a smartphone-sized battery would be hard pressed to run this thing for longer than 5 minutes lol
@@CariHere My phone: 480p. Take it or leave it.
I'm surprised UA-cam can run on such an old browser. I expected it to just complain that the system is too old to support its modern -DRM schemes- video codecs and JavaScript stuff.
Superbudget laptops nowadays suck ass, completely useless... even smartphones do better.
"heck yeah, the sound" *turns it down*
I relate to that so hard
I had one of these! It was an amazing laptop with a power brick almost the same size as the laptop... and it was suprising how much the little 1" subwoofer made a difference to the sound.
Those easy to remove fans is something i miss in most laptops nowdays
Nowadays these damn full-soldered things are like meant to be disposable when broken... If they're not welded shut you're already in repair heaven. They probably just don't coat everything on epoxy to impede any and all repairs cause it would likely be costlier and result in better water resistance, so break less.
unfortunetly that's only two fans, the 3rd fan is near that vent next to the battery and required almost complete disassembly to clean/replace.
Oh Wow! I was a technician at an engineering firm in the mid 2000's that bought all Dell's and we had some of these. Those things were tanks! I got to give Dell some kudos because those machines were built well and we could service them ourselves and they lasted a long time. We used ours until 2011!
Woah what tasks did you use them for by 2011?
As many for as long as they could since they were $5,000 a piece
@@vikeghawlimz965 we used the heck out of them, by the late 2000s we tasked the older machines like these to be lab machines that run Certain engineering equipment like CNC and testing systems that didn't require a lot of horsepower to run!
2:32
The good = High resolution screen
The bad = High resolution screen (makes text hard to read)
Make up your mind CNET!
In a time where scaling wasn't a thing it was true tho.
Yep, scaling wasn't a thing back then, the higher you went with the resolution, the harder it was to read text (and other problems), because it wouldn't scale with the resolution, that you choose. The only solution was to adjust it all by yourself, when you had chosen a higher resolution (if your screen and gpu had allowed it)
Why does everyone forget that Windows has had built-in font scaling since forever. It works quite well on Windows 95 through to 7 at least.
@@eDoc2020 well technically yes, but you had to set i manually. Not everyone seemed to know about this.
1920x1200px on a 15 inch screen is fine, even without any scaling.
I had this machine back in '04. It was great at all the multimedia stuff I had to get done at uni and gaming was a dream. Loved being able to play Doom 3 wherever I went. Miss that laptop.
When I saw my old laptop on screen, I smiled. When he said "Thanks to John" for the donation, I freaked out and tracked down my Inspiron to make sure I still had it lol Lots of good memories playing Age of Empires III, SW Empire at War, and Need for Speed Carbon; All with better graphics than our desktop at the time!
What a coinkydink, glad I caught this vid.
I serviced a TON of these back in 2004 and onwards. I still have one of those floppy disk modules. It has a mini-USB on the side and I occasionally use it with my Mac to read 3,5” disks. Yeah, it looks ridiculous.
By the way I've been curious about laptop floppy drives for a while, what interface does it use to link up to the PC? Is it the same 40 pin IDE the optical drives use somehow?
These laptops weigh about 4KG each Did you really service so many that they added up to 1000KG. You serviced a LOT.
@@Kalvinjj I don’t know what the D/Bay interface really was and can’t remember if it was the same as a regular optical drive. I don’t have my floppy drive handy right now.
@@simontay4851 No you’re right. I worked at a center that serviced all consumer Dells sold in Sweden but I probably didn’t service that many of this specific model. It was a figure of speech.
NO WAY! I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR SPEED BUSTERS FOR SO LONG!
I had the faintest childhood memory of an Ubisoft racing game where on a specific map there was a t-rex walking through a narrow hallway with a car in its mouth(which is the California map), but nobody could pinpoint it, ever. Everyone just said I was thinking of Re-Volt, but I knew that wasn't the game.
Thank you so much LGR, I'm off to have an amazing time reliving childhood memories. I never thought I'd find this game, this is an insane saturday!
Awesome, happy to bring on those long-lost memories!
Looks like a very fun game.
It's currently available on GOG! Runs perfectly fine on my Win 10 machine, always brings back childhood memories when playing.
I love watching LGR for so many reasons not least of all being finding the answers to the eternal burning question: what games was it?
Did you play gta 3 on this laptop?
"Texture Memory"
The old days of when cards were still in that weird place of swapping between fixed and programmable pipelines. Memories.
My dad had one of these and it played the Sims 2 soooooo good
Wow, I came here to comment the same thing! I used to play Sims 2 on my dad’s, too.
I play Sims 2 on PS2. Classic
i’m playing the sims 2 right now as i watch this lmao
@@coolertheory did it age well or is it lacking a whole lot of (comfortably) features?
I got the XPS when I graduated high school in 04. Saved for two years so I could buy a computer when I graduated. Half Life 2 needed to be played.
Was it worth it ? Especially in regards to gaming ?
Doom 3 Too
a BIG And Exigent Game For
Be 2004 Too And FarCry
I bought a Dell 8250 for Half-Life and Doom and that entire decade of the best pc games made so far to date.
@@yodasmomisondrugs7959 doom 3 made the change in PC made that pcs on that time
sometimes can put all power in effects and lighting exploding the potential
Don't forget F. E. A. R.
This might seem like a strange comment, but thank you for "timing" the ads correctly. I HATE it when they randomly cut in the middle of footage, especially since most of the time when the video resumes it "rewinds" a couple of seconds.
totally second this. haphazardly placed midrolls are the WORST.
*Removable exhaust fan*
I wished that became a thing with modern laptops.
I don't need the captions, but I enable them anyways for the "flavor text."
[Vehicular Man Laughter] and [Zombie Blasting Noises]
I had one of these, loved it! ( got it used for $300 in 2008) My only issue was when I had to replace the battery. The battery was about 3x the price of a normal battery
I don't know how I found this channel initially but it's become my favorite. Something pleasant and stress free to learning about these cool relics.
"doop de doop de doop comic sans farts"
Now that's the quality content I subscribed for.
I like my comic with farts, dang it :-(
It wouldn't be an LGR video without farts.
@@souta95 Farts and balls are the very essence of LGR.
imagine lgr seeing this i think he wouldnt
AHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH
I LYKE POSITIVE!!!!
Your production value and video quality are really professional looking. It's been nice watching you grow and watching your content.
FINALLY one of these videos again! Love old-school high-end hardware!
I had this laptop in college...I even had that mouse! I also learned the hard way after I thought my laptop was bricked...that it was really easy to loosen the hard drive without realizing it, preventing booting.
Damn, the fact that this is "old" now is a reality check for me... I remember wanting one of these so badly
The best moment of the day is always when LGR boss uploads a new video :) Greetings from Finland to Clint and thanks for the stellar content!
That startup sound...
*Jet engine starts up*
Just like a PS4.
how the hell did you comment 13 hours ago video came out in the last hour
@@default_hobo Maybe the video was unlisted or idk. There are 2 comments like this.
@@default_hobo Patreon
Wow, this brings back memories. I got one of these given to me in high school by a tutor as an incentive to get a perfect score in the year end trigonometry test. I still remember the countless hours of Counter strike and playing Half-Life 2 at 18-25 fps.
It would also play World of Warcraft better than any of my friend's laptops in school. Granted you had to carry it around with a flatbed truck, but it was okay... I was proud lol
Your tutor gifted you a $4800 laptop? What???
@@mickeymouse12678 It was his old laptop, he just bought a new one and the one he gave me was already a few years old. It also had some cheap, no name, aftermarket ram installed. I'm pretty sure he didn't spend $4800 on it. It was still the most expensive thing anyone has ever given to me though.
This is the laptop I clocked probably thousands of hours of Sims 2 gameplay on!! It was hot as balls!
Thousands of hours of draining my balls
@@blackstrap612 some say its still going.
That was uncalled for, don't be rude.
@KARLIMO Come on, it was funny. That sultry clickbait pic, practically begging for it. 😁
Fans that can be cleaned easily. A truly awesome thing for multiple cat owners.
[EDIT: Fans go BWOOOO]
As the Athlon came out in the 2000's I switched to AMD as well and with this 1GHz (wooooht) machine I was the king on LAN partys... at least for half a year
The Athlon T-Bird and P3 Coppermine were pretty much on par, but AMD was so much cheaper. Then Intel decided NetBurst makes for a good heater and AMD did amazing with Tbred-A, and especially Barton.
@@HappyBeezerStudios What the hell are those names? What is this?
@@apricotmadness4850 you know, the marketing names presented for the consumer releases of the x9-Gigglefutz and the respectable but broken Landmine-k9
Me finishing a Techmoan upload: Man I wish there was a new LGR to watch
(Uploaded 8 seconds ago)
That c64 album was cool!
Haaa same
looks like there's quite an overlap between the 2 channel's viewership! (got here from there too, but get through a few shorter vids between them)
Same here, just waiting for the one from Adrian's Digital Basement, perfect trilogy, perfect Saturday!
Skullz f yeah
so kewl
@@LGR ub3r l33t
@@LGR 1337
Yea babyyyyy
@@slowdriver6868 That's what i've been wating for!
Wow those XP screens bring back a lot of memories. Sometimes I just prayed to see that XP screen come up. Computers weren't so reliable back then. Thanks for the video!
Had this laptop back in college. It was a beast and requires me to buy an extra large bag to carry it. I was able to play warcraft 3 on this and that completely blew my mind at the time
12:23 That aquarium screensaver was a real blast from the past for me.
What's the program it is, how it calls?
@@Artsunrise i guess the name is "aqua real". not sure if u can get it now
@@adityag.5372 thanks! I'm found another one screensaver look like this - Marine Aquarium
i got this screensaver on a Windows XP media center vm, in wanted to copy it and when i executed it on my "real" computer a message says "this screensaver only works with Windows XP media center".
sad :(
I got the software for free, Don't know how but still have it! It is awesome
OMG this was my first computer it cost me $1,800. I had the 80 GB version with DVD RW drive and at the time it could play Half Life 2 and Doom 3
Remember when laptops were made to be serviceable (literally every component had its own bay and could be easily swapped)?
Ahhh good times...
A lot of business grade computers still are, except for m*c who is trying to turn computers into extra expensive phones.
I was so stunned by the memories this video brought back that I forgot to congratulate you on the absolutely fabulous cinematic quality this video has. It's just beautiful to watch! Great work!
My 2017 dell Inspiron also has an easy access to change parts, and also a really nice screen. Good to know they had this features since 2004
My 2020 Inspiron has a terrible screen. It depends more on price than anything else, although no amount of money will get you good support for your laptop anymore. If your laptop breaks, prepare to be on the phone for hours.
@@IndellableHatesHandles costumer support is bad no matter the brand, even apple
I have one of these! It is unquestionably a “desktop replacement”, you might suffer knee injuries if you tried using this brick on your lap for any length of time.
I remember when I got a 60 GB harddrive, I thought I could never fill it. Boy was I wrong.
Thought the same of the 80gb in the hand me down inspiron 1300 I still have...
ah jayzuz you lads are young i guess. I came up when GB sized HDDs were a distant hope only in sci fi movies and star trek
I remember my first computer was a Dell Dimension with like 80 or so gigs and my dad told me I'd never have to worry about space
@@dingbatdave9440 Not so young I don't remember the sounds of a dialup modem
40gb back on a AMD k6 based machine running Windows 98SE and I don't think we ever filled it up lol
I had worse PC in 2010 than this Laptop. What a beast.
I had a similar laptop in 2005, only the GPU wasn’t as powerful. But the same cpu. My battery only lasted 45 minuets so it’s even worse than this one lol. It’s got 3 fans, built in subwoofer. It’s got a media centre that I could listen to music on the laptop without having to boot up windows lol. It came with an IR remote to control the music from farther away (if you consider 1 foot max range away far away lol)
I have a friend using a worse PC than this notebook for almost 2 years now.
But can it run crisis?
My current PC is either worse or the same as this old laptop
Intel core 2 duo e6550 2.33ghz
2gb ram ddr2
64mb vram intergrated chipset
256gb hdd
Windows 7 Ultimate
@@kpitts8921 5-10 fps average at 800x600 low settings.
Holy crap, when that MasterWorks logo popped up I had flashbacks to playing Uz as a kid! The nostalgia thickened the second I saw those hyper-realistic 3D shapes. I never knew MasterWorks had made another game, but I do know what I'm doing today
I remember these times...our family had our first laptop circa 2005. It felt like such a ridiculously special thing. Pretty sure it got replaced a couple years later because it just became unbearably slow and the battery gave out. This one's completely nuts though, but it's fun to see we had been trying to replace desktops as early as '04.
I had one of these when it was new.
It served me well at home and at many LAN parties.
It also cut off the blood supply to my lower legs when I used it on my lap. Good times :)
Hah, i still have this laptop, with the 9700 radeon, loud as a jet engine, but beside the battery, still works.
I owned the XPS version of this for a brief period in 2009 (I actually traded a similarly speced P4 desktop for it) and it was an experience I will never forget, worked great too, until a fan died without my knowledge and the overtemp protection failed to shut it off, so it cooked itself.
I remember seeing this in computer catalogues at the time, especially the Skullz one. I was 10 and Skullz was the one I wanted.
Skulllz: +50 gamer cred
my friend had this laptop growing up and we spent a lot of time on it learning game maker and how to code, this video is extremely nostalgic
7:57 Winamp! Winamp, it really whips the llamas ass "baaa"
I miss laptops with ports, removable batteries and dedicated volume/media keys.
Well, it’s easy to do in such a huge and heavy laptop. Today with USB C I really only need one port to plug in my hub with HDMI, USB ports, power and stuff. You can just assign any key combination for volume and media stuff, much easier to reach. Considering the battery run times of modern laptops I can live with non-removable batteries. After a few years it might drop to 70% capacity or so but that still gives you hours of run time.
My refurb HP elitebook has not one, but two removable batteries. XD
My new dell precision has all of those things.
@@Mike-oz4cv yeah but why you gotta buy a fucking hub tho.. like my MSI laptop from 2016 has 2 usb3.0 and 1 usb2.0 ports, usbc, hdmi, ethernet and some stuff i don't know about
@@grootsChannel I plugged in all the cables of my old Thinkpad multiple times a day for years because I was too stingy to get the expensive Thinkpad docking station. For my new Thinkpad with USB C I got a simple USB C hub for 40€ and now I only have to plug in a single cable. It still has the same ports you listed but I don’t actually need them.
LGR, why do you have a FLIR camera? Oh, yes, BECAUSE YOU’RE LGR.
He found it at goodwill new in the box.
@@xxfodxelementxx fucking crazy
@@xxfodxelementxx Heh, I wish!
It was a Prime Day impulse buy.
@@LGR Next time you're feeling impulsive, get the CAT phone with FLIR built in and give us a review.
@@TheOtherBill You might be interested in BigClive's new video
God that old Dell configuration page really took me back.
I loved mine that I had gotten second hand in 2008. It was a perfect upgrade coming from an Inspiron 1100 (smaller but also used a desktop processor!). I was rocking this thing still in college back in 2012, running Windows 7 Ultimate and connecting it up to projectors in class for presentations.
I also made my own aluminum-shim mod to increase the cooling of the graphics card as well as used the SpeedFan app for Dell Inspiron's back in the day to make the cooling the most efficient while also staying very quiet. I'd say one of my most favorite laptops for back then even in 2012. It's hard plastics also allowed for plenty of bumps and bangs haha!
Oh the irony , I am waching this on a modern laptop without sub woofer and funny level of user accessibility/upgradability ...
We need to bring 16 : 10 aspect back.
Macbooks has had the 16:10 since 2006
@@prodbydanai yeah but they're macs.
They're way underrated imo
currently watching on my 16:10 monitor, I wish it had higher refresh rate though
I won't give it up, I use a 2560x1600 at work. Wish they made a 16:10 4k
This is what I call a "table-top" computer: portable enough to work on the go, IF you can find a place to put it.
Back when a "desktop" was actually a box being flat on the desk, and the portable ones were more "luggageable"
I remember getting my 17" 9200 with discrete GPU for $1600 in early 2005. Other than Dell using a crappy hinge which eventually killed the screen, it was a pretty awesome, though massive laptop.
Damn! That aquarium screensaver really transported me back in time for a second.
Holy shit hyper bowl. I thought playing that was a fever dream I had as a child. I didn't know it was on our computer and I guess I had just come across it by accident but I think it was only a demo
That fire extinguisher gag, though. Perfectly framed, perfectly timed, perfect level of slamming it down on the table.
mx518, nice..
?
The Logitech mouse in the video
Biggest mistake Logitech ever did was discontinue this mouse. At least the Zowie FK series is comparable and still produced.
@@su3ngsta ooh
@@Grizzermacht im using the mx 518 legendary. Basically the mx518, but with a good sensor. Came out last year
Were so blessed with high refresh gaming. Playing a game at 40fps back in these days felt absolutely fine. We've just become so accustomed to 144+
Because CPUs now are significantly faster and stand the test of time better. Finally good for audio processing and gaming since 10 years ago with Sandy Bridge (i7-2600K as example).
In 2017, Ryzen 7 1700 came out and significantly improved the availability for high core count CPUs. Now we have high core count CPUs that are pretty good for productivity and still can game pretty well.
Modern GPUs can handle real time light simulation or path traced lighting too and AI processing in hardware.
Back then in the Pentium 4 era, CPUs were so bad that you still needed an audio card or external hardware, forget using them for a Digital Audio Workstation or getting insane framerates in games (even console emulators).
My grandfather gifted me this laptop in 2006's Christmas
It was almost fully upgraded, I had to upgrade the ram and the HHD myself
He said he got it for 2400-2600$ (maybe it got cheaper with time)
And guess what, I'm still use it as my secondary laptop
I wish we still had laptops like this. Bulky and powerful.
I had one of these! But it was blue on the outside as well. Honestly a great machine. I remember I was able to run World of Warcraft on it and it ran surprisingly well. The heat was real though. It would cook itself to death if you put on any kind of fabric.
New York winter heater.
Man, you should do a video on Dell's site and their build your computer interface. I remember spending so much time on there crafting my dream setups back in the day.
You are so right. The old school Dell component selector was INCREDIBLE. Same as you, I could spend hours just configuring and pricing out slightly different component options to meet a budget - which I did do, working as a university I.T. tech back in 2004-2008.
These days, Dell's configurator is BARELY better than Apple's "screw you and your options, we don't care" website. It's really sad. But of course, corporations operate based on consumer interest. The vast majority of people didn't care about Dell's fancy super-configurator. So, year by year, its options were stripped away, leaving us with the skeleton we have now.
Feels like that laptop startup fan will be the new vcr sound effect in 10 years
Midtown Madness footage is so nostalgic to me, it was the first game I played with my brand new Microsoft Precision Wheel back in the day.
And for the record, the wheel still works perfectly fine to this day.
Gotta appreciate he used WINAMP
Now that brings back memories, downloading skins and listening to CD music 🙂
I still use winamp to listen my old mp3s. Oh good nostalgia 😥
@@warachito I wish they still update winamp and make remastered skin or something, btw still using it on Windows XP retro vm nothing special just bunch of good ol games and some mp3s from childhood which i listen on winamp :)
@@joshuagibson2520 Yeah I agree
It really whips the llama's ass
Still running Winamp, on Win10, better than the Microsoft offerings
The keyboard looks like its surrounded by masking tape.
The 80-90 minutes battery life was being generous. I remember these things getting 45min when gaming.
It's crazy how fast tech has improved just in 17 years
OMG! Had one of those (not sure exact model though) but this surely brings back memory... Remember a lots of Unreal Tournament battles with my colleagues back then too! Thanks again for your epic videos making working from home less lonesome!
When turning on I was expecting the lights to dim a little. Disappointed.
🤣🤣🤣
"Doop dee doop dee doop comic sans farts" My favorite song!
its 2000 rock n roll i like it
AHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH
I LYKE POSITIVE!!!!
It's trippy watching this footage, esp the 3dmarks benchmark, where I know I've stared at that damn benchmark for ages back in the day and yet I couldn't remember parts of it, fascinating the blanks that generate in memory over time.
Been a while since I ran 03, usually I do 2001SE or 06 for older stuff, guess I have to give it a spin again.
I got my first laptop in 2004. It was a Toshiba Satellite A50 computer with "Intel Centrino". It actually had a 1.6 GHz Pentium M processor and a terrible Intel GME graphics adapter. I enjoyed the crap out of that computer. I used it everyday at school and then gamed on in the afternoon - though we also had a desktop for more involved games. And that thing worked for 6 years as my main computer. I really loved that thing, much as it frustrated me. I still have it, though it is in rough shape.
My dad had that laptop
All that power and resolution to hone in his solitaire skills
I had one of these! I even had the 256mb 9800 from the XPS as offered through some special sale. It was great for a few years until the thermal past broke down - there was eventually a class action suit over these because the thermal paste broke down in only 2-3 years, causing it to throttle to about 300mhz shortly after boot. Still have fond memories of staying up to 5am on this thing my freshman year, and it was my first taste of HD.
I just redid my thermal paste today. There was none. The pentium had fused itself to the heatsink... Way to go Dell! I wonder were al. their revenue from this machine went lol
@@nathanaelhood7699 Honestly an IHS fused to the heatsink probably gets better thermal performance than paste, assuming it's properly fused together and didn't destroy the chip in the process.
@@MrMattumbo yeah it probably does lol. it might have been best to just leave it like it was, but I didn't... only problem though, the chip socket is designed for the chip to be removed so it was halfway stuck in there. fortunately I was able to remove it without destroying the socket.
Man, I had one of these back in 2004. I remember the small loan I had to take out to get it!
Holy crap HYPERBOWL
Nostalgia
I really wish laptops were this serviceable today. So accessible that you don't even have to unscrew the bottom of the device to get at the RAM, hard drive etc.
Okay to be fair $6,700 for those specs back then was amazing. Not to mention it would still be able to run Windows 10 32-bit today!