Keyboard

The difference between a good keyboard and a bad keyboard can affect how accurate and how fast you can type. For me, the keyboard is slightly above average. This keyboard has some decent tactile feel, but a little too soft. It isn’t as nice as the Thinkpad keyboards from Lenovo, but still a great competitor to it. If you are looking for this class of notebook, try the Dell Vostro 1500 to get a comparison, as Vostro series has a much nicer keyboard.

Touchpad

When walking around campus, I notice a lot of people carry mouses around. The main reason is because most touchpads cannot move the cursor around the screen smoothly. This one is no exception. I found that the touchpad works average compared to other notebooks on the market, but since it is a bit small and there is “flat scroll wheel” on the sides, I find my self accidently scrolling the window when I don’t want to. During the time of my testing, the scrolling would occasionally lock and require me to press ESC to be able to return to my scrolling. I suggest carrying a small bluetooth mouse around if this is an area of concern.

Media Controls

The media control panel is located towards the top right of the notebook, above the keyboard. It provides controls for back, stop, play/pause, forward and the volume for the notebook. While touch sensitive and backlit keys are nice aesthetically, they still don’t function well. When pushing the buttons, I noticed that I would get a significant delay in response and or wouldn’t work on the first try. This got annoying especially when I was using the included Media Player and would have to push the keys 5 or 6 times before Media Center would actually register my command.

This can be problematic if you are at work or in a college classroom and do not want your notebook to make any noisewhen you accidentally visit a website that has background noise. You would quickly want to shut it off, so it doesn’t disturb anyone else. But if the keys aren’t responding properly, you will quickly find yourself at the stares of the people around you. But if you are seeking attention, you can just ignore what I just said.

Audio

The Inspiron 1525 comes with 2 Headphone Jacks in the front of the notebook and speakers that span the entire length of the keyboard. Like most notebooks on the market, the sound quality isn’t stellar when compared to using real speakers, but I have heard speakers that sound a lot worse than this notebook. This notebook speaker is loud enough that it can be heard across a room if needed and you can certainly boost the volume more by some aftermarket speakers.

Having two audio jacks can be very useful if you have someone to share your media with. Otherwise, there isn’t much else to use them for.