It heats up, battery life is rubbish, and under the warranty they say certain things aren't covered, so make sure you read the small print.

I have a work laptop which I use too. It is an IBM Thinkpad. It is not as big as a Dell laptop, but it is durable, it lasts and it doesn't mess up as much as the Dell.

Basically, the Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop is a pile of trash, and if you are going to risk buying one, then make sure you get the extra on-site next business day support, because without it, you are going to be paying loads out every time it goes wrong.

The Dell Inspiron 8500 is basically a pile of junk and is no use to anybody. For the price you buy this, you could buy an Apple ibook.

My Dell Inspiron 8500 was delivered surprisingly rapidly in november 2003. At christmas the dvd player started becoming erratic in its operation. I sent it back to Dell and it came back 3 weeks !! later. Unfortunately they had changed the XP Pro to XP home and omitted to install many other programmes and also the dvd decoder, so no dvd. And quality control had signed it off as ok. They offered to send an engineer, but if they can't fix it in 3 weeks what hope? I was advised to sue by trading standards. Dell will not respond to my emails. AVOID unless you like grief. In my opinion Dell UK technical support is way below par!