Unless you are regularly transferring large files such as movies, 10/100 is plenty fast enough for average users. And considering that most users connect via wifi. However if you require the 10/100/1000 port, there are other models such as Latitude and XPS that have the capability. Also the Inspiron 15 7000 series has a 100/1000 ethernet port.

Yes, you should just select a model that actually has a 1GB NIC. I agree that 1GB LAN is necessary and we have wireless for our cell phones and visitors. In my case with an Inspiration 13 7368, I don't have a LAN port so I have purchased a docking station which connects to my USB C with Display Port. When I first hooked it up I was only getting 100 MBs, I changed cables after updating drivers did nothing,  the cable change fixed the issue for me. I think I have seen USB 3.0 docks that support 1GB LAN might be another option for you?

100 megabit is only 12.5 megabytes which is less than half of USB 2.0 which is very slow.

I use ethernet mainly to get as fast as possible connection to the internet and ISP's these day are offering plan in excess of 100 megabits.

Agreed, but for the average user it would suffice. Since you are a power user, as I am myself, the fastest possible is what you are looking for. I have 120 MB/s Internet and in my area could go up to 1.5 GB/s. But most users in my area have speeds lower than that in the 40 MB/s or less and are content. Again average users are content with fast enough connections....as for me, and obviously you, hook me up to fiber and bring on the speed.

It baffles me that Dell still ships systems in 2018 that have 10/100 Ethernet when they standardized on Gigabit for the Latitude line back in 2003.  But I guess their market research indicates that the cost savings, however meager, are worth it.  The profit margins on the consumer-grade laptops that have 10/100 Ethernet are razor thin these days, so I'm sure that's part of it, and relatively few people who buy consumer-grade laptops even use wired Ethernet anymore anyway, partly because WiFi has gotten quite fast and partly because some consumer laptops don't have built-in Ethernet at all anymore.  I agree with the recommendations above -- either get a laptop that comes with Gigabit Ethernet or buy a USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter.  They're very inexpensive, although you of course sacrifice a USB port.  Some of those adapters offset that by including a USB port on the adapter itself, although that port wouldn't be powered, so it still wouldn't be quite as useful.

I just bought one of these Inspiron 15 3000 and was dumbfounded to see 25 year old technology still being installed in new laptops.  What a joke!

I thought my ethernet port was broken... my Internet speed is faster than this junk.  What's sad is the wifi on this system is faster than this ethernet port.  Why even include the ethernet port when the users who want legitimate ethernet have to go buy a dongle to support gigabit speeds.

gg

It's for the same reason you can still buy some entry-level cars with manual crank windows -- to keep the price as low as possible.

This is an entry-level system designed to sell for as low a price as possible, with a feature set to match.

Yeah, my bad for not realizing a system that has ethernet in 2021 doesn't support Gb.  I can guarantee, most consumers don't plug in their laptop to ethernet because they use wifi.  If Dell was trying to save a buck, they could have just not included it at all and let those who would be interested in ethernet go buy an external dongle.  It is just to be able to pad their spec list to show they support ethernet.  They've already invested the money into having the onboard ethernet adapter.  Why not spend the extra $5 to manufacture it with Gb?   We all know why though, as you said, so it will force the consumer to spend an extra couple hundred dollars more for other features they don't care about, just so they get the $5 part they wanted.

@Krader1  I don't get it either, but I don't have access to the market research data that Dell does, and it seems that Dell has determined that people who buy their entry level products will either accept being limited to 10/100 Ethernet, assuming they care about using Ethernet at all.  Apart from Google Fiber and Verizon Fios, neither of which have broad deployments, residential Internet connections of 100 Mbps only became broadly available fairly recently, and of course even among the customers that have service from a provider that offers it, not everyone has it or necessarily needs all of that bandwidth to be available to their single laptop.  And even that only discusses Internet connections available within the US, whereas Dell sells these laptops globally.  Some countries have had much faster Internet for much longer than it's become broadly available here, while others are still far behind the US.

But if Gigabit is important to you, then either buy a dongle or buy a system that has it built-in.  It doesn't make a ton of sense to criticize a company for offering a product that evidently has a target market simply because that target market isn't you, especially if that same company also already offers other products that fit your needs.  Sort of like ejn63 said about cars with manual windows, if the vendor has found a market that accepts that setup and indeed might prefer it for cost savings, then what business do I have criticizing that vendor for attracting the business of that market segment?  If I don't want it, I can buy something else.

If you're upset because you bought the system simply assuming that it included Gigabit Ethernet, then while I can sort of understand the assumption given that Latitude systems have had it since at least 2003, it's also true that you didn't read the specs.

I think it's more likely the bottom-end systems use an old board layout that includes the Ethernet port and circuitry on it, and the manufacturer doesn't want to spend the funds to redesign it out -- it's probably cheaper to use older, paid-for designs and update only what's needed.  And with Intel's last few rounds of CPUs involving so little change, there's not much incentive to invest in redesigning the boards.

Many of the higher-line models no longer include Ethernet so the design can be slimmer and more attractive.  That's not even a factor on a system designed to sell for as low a price as possible -- keeping the production costs as low as possible is the primary factor.  It's the same reason you can still buy a system with 4G RAM and a spinning hard drive in 2021 -- though that can be addressed, it's a gotcha in buying because it's not going to produce anything like acceptable performance even for entry -level buyers.

I'm not sure the cost of re-engineering a board to remove an Ethernet chipset and connector would be higher than the cost of including that chipset and connector on every example of that system you sold.  And note that earlier in this thread I specifically said that I personally would have expected Dell to either step up to Gigabit or remove Ethernet entirely.  But I don't have access to Dell's cost of goods and other financial documents, just like I don't have access to their market research data, so maybe keeping 10/100 Ethernet makes sense somehow.  It might be as simple as people who buy low-end PCs might also tend to have old, low-end WiFi routers that are NOT faster than 10/100 Ethernet, in which case even 10/100 is an improvement over the WiFi performance they would actually get, which is not the same as the WiFi performance the system could deliver when connected to better equipment.