Digital Archaeology: Dell Vostro 1500

The Vostro line fit into a kind of weird marketing segment within Dell. They already had the Inspiron line for home users, the Latitude line for business, the Precision line for workstation class machines and XPS for gaming. So where does Vostro fit in? I think it was supposed to be a sort of budget business line.

This particular model is the Vostro 1500. It's main features are a Core 2 Duo T7250 CPU @ 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM and GeForce 8400M GS video controller. Other specs include:

• CPU: Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.00 GHz
• RAM: 2 GB DDR2-667/PC2-5300
• Video: GeForce 8400M GS
• Screen: 1280x800

For more detailed hardware info, check out the output of HardInfo here.

The CPU, while not the very fastest Core 2 Duo available, was on the higher end of the scale, at least among Merom processors. There were a LOT of Core 2 Duo models with subtle and not so subtle differences over the years.

The spec sheet above must refer to a slightly older configuration as it has a slower processor. There were also versions wit slightly faster CPUs.

The GPU, while low end, is at least a dedicated solution. It even had its own dedicated memory though Linux reports three different amounts in HardInfo. I THINK it is 128MB. It was probably capable of playing most games available at the time of its release though you would often have to reduce resolution and/or details to get reasonable frame rates.

This laptop currently has 2GB of RAM installed and supposedly it is expandable to 4GB. 4GB is generally what I consider to be the low end limit of what is useable in a modern environment. You CAN get by with less. For instance, I'm typing this on the very same Vostro 1500 running a recent version of Xubuntu and it only has 2GB. It's also running BOINC with two tasks running in the background, HardInfo is up in the background and I have several terminal sessions open and am having no issues with slow down or swapping. However, most people want to browse the web and modern web browsers, particularly since the advent of tabbed browsing, are real memory hogs.

This laptop shipped with Windows XP. Running Windows 10 with only 2GB is technically possible but not practical. Windows 7 is probably the best fit for this machine as far as a Microsoft OS but that's not necessarily going to be useful in a modern environment. Linux is a better choice for that. On the other hand, if you want to run XP era games, then this laptop would probably work pretty well for that.

The only real physical resemblance this Vostro has to the Inspiron line is the row of blue backlit buttons on the front used for media control. Otherwise, the Vostro has an understated, all black design. Internally, it's probably using much the same hardware as the Inspiron models it was contemporary with.

Like all the hardware I run, this one is crunching away at various BOINC tasks. As old as this laptop is, it can still run most (non-GPU) projects. You can see how it is doing on my favorite projects like Einstein@home, MilkyWay@home, Universe@home, Rosetta@home, World Community Grid and Asteroids@home or see how it is doing overall at FreeDC.

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