Dell Build Quality and Aesthetics - $600 Notebook Roundup
The Inspiron 2200 is fairly well built and felt quite solid, especially compared to the Compaq offerings. The unit has the most subtle and arguably sleek design out of the bunch, being completely constructed out of black plastic. While the Gateway and Compaq designs make use of silver of varying shades and sometimes mixing in black, Dell's design is a lot more plain, and honestly, it works a lot better. The design of the Inspiron 2200 is far more likely to age better and just has a lot less going on. The Inspiron 2200 accepts that it isn't going to be the best looking laptop, especially not at this price point, while the others try too hard. 
The only downside to the Dell's exterior appearance is that the black plastic, despite having a matte finish, can show oils from fingerprints without much difficulty. If you can get over that (and/or deal with the cleaning aspect), then it's a bargain for a better looking notebook.
With the display closed, the Inspiron 2200 is, overall, the thickest notebook in this roundup, measuring in at 1.46". The overall footprint of the notebook is more reasonable, however, at 13.0" x 10.6". The Inspiron 2200 had the absolute brightest display out of all 5 of the notebooks in this roundup. Unfortunately, the notebook only comes with a 14" XGA display, so although it may be bright, it isn't the highest resolution. That being said, most fonts/font sizes are far more legible on the Dell's 14" XGA screen than the higher resolution displays used by the widescreen Compaq and Gateway competitors. So, if you aren't used to or comfortable with smaller text sizes, Dell's XGA display may not be a bad thing.
In terms of brightness, the Inspiron 2200 at its brightest setting measured in at around 180 nits, while the rest of the systems were only able to hit in the 120 - 140 nit range; in other words, the difference is noticeable.
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Zora Stowers
Update: 2024-06-10