The Vostro 200 is a good basic computer for business needs.
Pros:
Good (not great) graphics, well appointed for the tasks it was designed to do.
Cons:
Obviously, this is not a high-performance machine.
The Bottom Line:
The Vostro 200 is a good basic business machine that can easily have XP reinstalled on it. A good choice for a economical work PC.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
My clients are mostly nonprofit agencies, and I get to explain to them that their elderly Celerons are near death.
At one client's, they made a decision to replace 24 desktops in one shot -- no small amount for this client. So we chose a good basic machine that would be enough for the needs of their average worker -- the Dell Vostro 200.
Vostro is a new line of Dell products for small businesses. Since Dell makes it very easy to customize their machines, it's not like I can simply reel off a laundry list of processors and RAM and call it a day. We set up the machines with 2 GB of RAM, DVD drives, 75 GB hard drives and a dual-core Pentium E2140. The machines came to about $700 total.
The Vostro 200 has one feature which will be of great interest to system administrators. Like most new machines, it uses SATA hard drives instead of IDE. This has been a problem if you want to install XP instead of Vista (and I do, believe me, I do.) To my delight, the Vostro 200's SATA driver is in the plug and play database for Windows XP. In other words, you can buy it with no operating system and just put in your XP CD and install the OS without having to hunt up the proper SATA driver. You're not stuck with Vista with this model!
Before you do this, you should know that you need to have a properly licensed copy of Windows XP, obviously.
Also, although you don't have to fight with finding a SATA driver, you will have to go on a driver hunt once the OS is installed, since almost assuredly the XP CD won't have the drivers for video, audio, chipset, network adapter, etc. Fortunately, Dell's website is relatively easy to maneuver and it makes driver hunting about as painless a process as it's going to get.
The Vostro is an economical business machine, and it's got its drawbacks. The onboard graphics card is nothing to write home about. Gamers will be disappointed. But then this is a machine that you're supposed to be doing work on, not playing games.
The CPU and RAM are enough to ensure that Microsoft Office programs, web surfing, and email are a pleasant experience free of the dreaded hourglass -- and that's probably 90% of what the users want. If you have a particularly CPU-intensive need like digital graphics editing, you'll probably want something with more oomph -- but for basic business needs, the Vostro 200 delivers the goods perfectly well.
The built-in sound card is up to business needs; it will play sounds in a PowerPoint presentation or a webcast perfectly well. There are headphone and microphone jacks in the front as well as the back, which is a nice touch on a lower-end unit. There are two USB ports on the front and two on the back. The Vostro 200 does not have any legacy ports like parallel printer ports or serial ports -- just video, network, and USB. It has a built-in network card (a Broadcom) that is up to the task of modern networking. 'Good enough' is the best way to describe the Vostro 200.
All in all, this is a good machine for basic business use. It's got some fancy touches, but not too many. If you want a machine for a worker who mostly uses Word and the Web, the Vostro 200 will fill those needs while saving some money.
