Review of the Dell Inspiron 1018.

On Christmas in 2010, I received a Dell Inspiron 1018 netbook as a gift. It was meant to replace a larger and heavier Toshiba laptop that I used for both work and play. Size and weight were important issues as I commuted to work on a bicycle.

I work as a professional electronics technician on a variety of flight-critical aircraft components. Tracking information is a serious part of the job, and being able to retrieve that information quickly makes the task of maintaining aircraft computers easier. Most of the time, I use spreadsheets and word processing programs, comparatively simple jobs for this netbook computer.

The Dell Inspiron uses an Intel Atom N455 CPU operating at 1.66 Ghz with the Windows 7 Starter edition. Given my simple needs, this has proven to be a reliable package. The machine has only 1 Gigabyte of RAM, so when multiple browser tabs are open, it's noticeably slow. When using a photo editing program with huge RAW image files, the computer may take a minute or more in processing. I've learned to be patient.

The Dell has a 223 Gigabyte hard drive and is currently about two-thirds full, with 80 Gigabytes occupied by photos. Photography is my hobby - an obsession according to my wife - and digital photos can quickly overwhelm a hard drive. I reduce the size of the images stored on the Dell in order to save space and back up the full size images on an external hard drive about once a month.

Watching videos on the web has been a more pleasant experience with the Dell. The screen doesn't freeze while it's buffering incoming video. The screen is about the right size for reading e-books from the library, and reduces eye strain compared to smaller devices like an e-book reader or a smart phone. Younger people may have little trouble reading on small screens, but those of us well into middle age appreciate the larger display.

Since this Dell Inspiron 1018 suits my needs so well, I won't hesitate to purchase another when the time comes.