I bought this new in 2010 for the purpose of editing a motorcycle club newsletter, replacing a Compaq Armada M700. It originally had a Celeron CPU and 2GB of RAM, but has since been upgraded with a Core 2 Duo T9550 and 8GB of RAM. The original 250GB 5400rpm HDD has since been fitted to the Inspiron 1545 and in its place a Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm unit fitted instead. It was very much built to a price and feels very plasticky, however it's been rather more robust than expected and has given good service. It currently runs Slackware 14.2.
The CPU upgrade needs to be done with care as not all steppings of the Core 2 Duo are compatible with the chipset (the same problem affects the Inspiron 1545). So you can, for example, look to fit a Core 2 Duo T9400, but some will work and others won't, depending on the stepping. To reduce the risk, I chose the T9550 as that only came in a stepping that's compatible, and was also available for a low price.
