I have two of them at home, and they’re great. Now, just a few months after I bought this, there are drives out there with 32 MB buffers. I tried ordering a drive with a 16 MB buffer, but Dell didn’t offer one at the time of purchase. The OptiPlex 745 wouldn’t be a Dell if it didn’t have a few points of contention, a few things that make you smack your head out of frustration and ask WHY. If one of you can clarify this, I’d really appreciate it. Is it because 4 GB is the upper limit on x86 computing platforms? Possibly, but then shouldn’t it still see the whole 4 GB? I don’t know. Did it reserve 1 GB for itself without telling me? It would be nice if it said that somewhere, but it doesn’t. What’s more, and I have a feeling Microsoft is to blame for this, even though I installed 4 GB of RAM in the machine, and the computer sees all 4 GB when it boots up, Windows has chosen to see only 3069 MB out of the 4096 MB. Speaking from personal experience, that’s the sad story of Windows and PC hardware in general… New hardware, new operating system, loaded with goodies, using the equivalent of a nitrous oxide addition to the carburetor in the form of a ReadyBoost drive, and still, it only jogs along at a comfortable pace. I even use a 1 GB USB flash drive as a ReadyBoost drive, and while it does somewhat minimize the hard drive seek operations, the performance is still nothing special. Blech.Īs if that’s not enough, when I start applications, the performance is once again nothing special. That’s ten agonizing minutes while I watch it slowly grind through its tasks. I’m not sure whether it’s Vista’s or Dell’s fault - or maybe they’re both to blame - but it takes about 10 minutes for a full restart cycle. You’d think with these specs, it’d zip right through the applications and start up really fast. I installed Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition on it. The computer came with an Intel Dual Core 2.66GHz processor, 250 GB SATA 8 MB Buffer hard drive, 4 GB RAM, 256 MB ATI PCI Express video card, and a few other goodies, including a Firewire card. Cheap, plasticky, loud mouse that doesn’t feel right in my hand.Sluggish performance: it should do a LOT better given the specs, which I’ll outline below.Cheap hard drive with tiny buffer size (8 MB).(By itself, it’s still pretty expensive.) The screen was a really good deal when bundled with the computer.Multi-card reader built into front panel.Actually, the mouse is supposed to be a “premium” 5-button mouse, but it’s pretty inferior in real-world use. The keyboard and mouse are standard Dell hardware. I ordered it with a 24″ wide screen LCD, which I like except for its cumbersome controls. I got an Energy Star-rated 745 in the Desktop form factor, which can be stood upright or laid on its side, like I have it here in the photo. I suppose I should take it all in stride, since one can’t expect something outstanding or superior from Dell - only something adequate. On the other hand, the performance is sluggish, and some of the design aspects of the hardware leave a lot to be desired. On the one hand, the form factor is nice. My reaction after using it for about 6 months is mixed. As much as I don’t like it, I’m stuck doing my development work on PCs for now. I ordered the Dell OptiPlex 745 computer for use at work, where we’re in a full Windows environment.
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