I'm in the market for a new laptop. My 4 year old one just isn't cutting it anymore. Constantly overheats and is really really slow. I'm looking to keep it under $1000 and I get an 8% discount at Dell so I'm probably looking to go there. What else would fellow WFers recommend. I'm looking for something all purpose, but not crazy. Only requirement is a 15" screen. I came up with this at Dell : Inspiron 1501 AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-56 OPERATING SYSTEM(s) Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Basic LCD panel 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife™(glossy) MEMORY 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHZ, 2 DIMM VIDEO CARD ATI RADEON® Xpress1150 256MB HyperMemory™ (Integrated) HARD DRIVES 60GB Hard Drive Network Card and Modem Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 7.08 Combo/DVD+RW Drives 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive Sound Card Integrated Audio Wireless Networking Cards Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini Card (54Mbps) After my discount that comes to arount $860.
The hard drive's kind of on the small side, and keep in mind that the ATi graphics, while impressive, are going to take away 256 MB of RAM from your system RAM, leaving you at only 1.75 GB instead of 2 (if that actually makes a difference, I honestly can't see it). Oh, yeah, and unless you're replacing the Vista Home Basic with something else like XP or a Linux variant, you need to kick it up to Home Premium. Home Basic is shit, even from a guy firmly entrenched in the MS camp like myself.
What Kyle said. I could try to give you more insight if you'd provide us with some info on what you use it for.
Okay good so far. I use it for a little bit of everything. Right now, I use it at work for your basic MS Office needs, internet when I don't feel like doing those needs, and light gaming. I'm prefer an Intel system, as I know they perform much better at this juncture, but they are far far more expensive it seems right now. What's so bad about the Basic version? Intially I was going to just put XP back on it, but want that copy of Vista for later.
Intel doesn't perform THAT much better right now, they've just taken a slight lead. This is actually confusing a lot of people, due to the hype of the new Core 2 and people buying into it. Now people believe that every Intel is better than AMD, which is just not the case, so you see people buying Pent-Ds and Celerons, thinking they're getting some sweet Intel love. Some Intel CPUs are better at certain processes, sometimes by just a very little, sometimes by a decent margin.. but it all depends on what you are comparing it to. For the average consumer and for your needs, I seriously doubt you'd notice the difference between AMD or Intel.
That's what I'm figuring now too looking around at the prices. If I was building my desktop again I would probably go Intel, but in the laptop market, especially one that I'm not going into the hardcore range with, you're probably right. The extra savings are worth the very slight decrease in performance. I had wanted to get something without integrated graphics, but alas all of those solutions are far more expensive, so I'll live with integrated. With 128 MB of dedicated video Ram I should be okay.
