Throwback: My First Laptop Review (Premium)

Over 20 years ago, in January 2001, I published my first-ever laptop review in a column for my weekly Windows 2000 Magazine UPDATE email newsletter.

Thinking back to this time, Windows Millenium Edition and Windows 2000 were still the then-current versions of Windows, and the Windows XP branding and look and feel had yet to be revealed; that would happen less than a week after I wrote this, but at the time of this writing, it was still known by its codename, Whistler.

That my first laptop review was a Dell is somewhat fitting, as the first PC I ever purchased---using an advance from my first book, by the way---was also a Dell. This one is lost to the mists of time, but it was a desktop tower PC, probably an XPS something, and it had a 486DX chipset. As with this review laptop, I don’t believe I have any photos for some reason. I couldn’t find any, at least. (And this newsletter was just plain text.)

Anyway. Here's the review, with some notes.
Laptop of the month: Dell Inspiron 4000
This month, I'd like to introduce my first laptop of month, Dell's stunning Inspiron 4000. The impetus for this column was my admittedly depressing experience last year buying a laptop, and while I can't say that things have worked out yet, the silver lining is that a number of PC makers contacted me about their systems. So I decided that it might be good idea to expand my look at laptops to include a wider variety of machines. And the Dell Inspiron 4000 is a great way to start.
I had written earlier about my horrible experience trying to buy a high-end Compaq laptop. I can’t remember the name or model, sorry, but what I do recall about this escapade was that it had an optical drive of whatever sort that could be swapped out for a second battery, so I had ordered a battery for it as well. That battery arrived very quickly, but after waiting a month or more on the actual laptop, I finally had to cancel the order.
Dell currently sells two lines of business-oriented laptops, the performance-oriented Inspirons and the network-optimized Latitudes. The Inspiron line includes the budget-minded 3800 series, the 4000 and 5000 mobile performers, and the no-compromises 8000, which is truly a desktop replacement. On the Latitude side, the choices are even headier: The company offers the value-oriented CPt series, the thin and light C600, LS, and CS series, and the desktop alternative C800. In general, the differences between the two product lines are pretty vague, though Inspiron systems tend to get the latest technology first. I chose an Inspiron 4000 because it's the perfect middle ground between the super-small Latitude LS and the Inspiron 8000 behemoth.

I wasn't disappointed: The 4000 features a wonderful keyboard, a bright and beautiful 14-inch screen, and a dual pointing capability that lets you choose between a standard trackpad and an IBM-style pointing stick.
That “pointing stick” was and still is called TrackPoint.
It also includes two...