new laptop

[charliex]

i finally decided i needed a faster laptop, been searching for a few days, i bought a 17" gateway P6860FX last week thats pretty nice, but i wanted a small one to travel around with, been looking at the Asus G2/G1's, sagers, vaios (which i usually get) and about 20 billion others, finally settled on a Dell XPS 1530 which just seems like a good deal.

$1,393 for a core 2 duo 2.5 Ghz with 1920x1200 screen and 4GB ram seems pretty sweet, also includes 1 year accidental damage coverage.

NVIDIA 8600 GT is getting on a bit but its still a reasonable card and i'll upgrade the 5400 RPM drive later.

XPS M1530 Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T9300 (2.5GHz/800Mhz FSB, 6MB Cache)
Operating System Genuine Windows® Vista Home Premium Edition SP1
System Color Tuxedo Black
Memory 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms)
LCD, Color and camera Full Hi Definition, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch LCD (1920x1200) & 2.0 M
Video Card 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT
Hard Drives Size: 320GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
Combo or DVD+RW Drive Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write) 8XDVDRW
Sound Card Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy HD Software Edition
Wireless Networking Cards Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-card
Primary Battery Free Upgrade to a 9 cell Battery
Warranty & Service 1Yr In-Home Service, Parts Labor,24x7 Phone Support
Accident and Theft Protection Add Accidental Damage and LoJack Theft Protection to 1Yr Warr.
SECURITY Finger Print Reader XPS M1530
Bluetooth and Wireless USB Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Internal (2.0+Enhanced Data Rate)
Doms Camera and Color High Resolution,Black glossy widescreen 15.4 inch LCD(1920x1200)&2MP Ca
Processor Branding Intel Centrino Core Duo Processor
Dell Printer Driver Windows Vista™ Premium VPN
DataSafe Online Backup Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr

[jim-clayton]

Does Vista work okay for you? I'm guessing XP is no longer an option with a new purchase.

[Shmoon]

Should gave gotten a real computer, an Apple.

[tvacc]

Originally Posted by Shmoon

Should gave gotten a real computer, an Apple.

yeah.....if apple had its way we would all be spending $400 for an OS and 5K for the computer.

Propritary software and Hardware sold by one company.....just the way to do it. Right...just like there should be one car company selling one car that runs on fuel that they make just for that car.

You apple guys really have your head in the sand.

Been in the computer business for 26 years and I have seen it all.

I usually dont respond to such things...but after buying Apples lately for customers and seeing how much they cost lately and how much it costs to keep them up to date....I just had to say something.

[abbodabbodo]

Couldn't resist this thread... if he wants he could throw on XP himself but I run Vista on my dell xps 1330 and it runs great. But yes that laptop was fully loaded and from a quick glance so is charliex's so I doubt he'd have any issues. If he wants to goof around with multiple OS's he could also run ubuntu linux for free and then "wow" people since then he'd be the one with the "unique" OS.

[jonmorrison19]

go apple

[silvElise]

Charlie,
I had an XPS before this and recently went Asus... The machine is a freakign beast I love it. The price point was amazing. The build quality was better then my XPS, and I loved going from a 17 inch screen to a 15 lighter and more compact with more punch......


I vote asus all the way.

[charliex]

I have Vista 64 on the gateway and its really smooth, it works for a lot of things, some drivers missing which is expected, same with Vista 32, i'll end up doing a dual boot with XP on it, thats one of the reasons i looked at the dell, i also wanted to wait for the G2 refresh thats coming in summer time. Our media centre extender pc runs Vista Ultimate on a X850 with an AMD 3500+ and its runs just fine.

I really did like the asus but a similar config machine was $2,000, time will tell if its the right setup.

thanks for the laugh apple guys ! if i wanted to pay almost $3,000 for a PC laptop it wouldn't be from apple, they have the worst failure rate of any box shifter. If for some reason i forgot how to use advanced features of an OS or lose 80% of the software i use, i could switch to OSX, if i wanted a decent unix i'd go ubuntu/freebsd/netbsd anyway, plus i have a 15" G4 powerbook if i ever need to do something i can't do with XP that OSX can do, which i can't really think of anything.

Apple doesn't even have a comparable setup anyway, i'd have to get a much lower resolution display, less hard drive space and pay an extra $1,300 for the privilege of buying a machine which has practically the same intel made motherboard with an intel made processor, and an NVIDIA GPU.

I can also change the CPU out in the Dell without resorting to surface mount soldering, though as far as i know only the 2.6Ghz is above the one i got anyway and its not worth the extra heat for the minimal speed increase.

I really liked the XPS 1330 too, but i still have my Vaio TR2A which is super light, and then for now i have my X505 if i really feel like going ultralight, its lighter than 'air', as well as my UMPC UX180 for carrying around..

[25psi_Elise_Killer]

FYI, i bought a Dell Inspirion series a few months ago, and the hard drive failed on me not too long ago. Dell covered it under warranty.
Luckily, i backup my drive...

Funny thing is they asked me "do you need any plastic/rubber pieces which might've fallen/broken off from the bottom of the laptop? We can ship them to you along with the new hard drive."

[TimMullen]

Originally Posted by tvacc

I usually dont respond to such things...but after buying Apples lately for customers and seeing how much they cost lately and how much it costs to keep them up to date....I just had to say something.

It's been a few years, but I used to be in charge of computer support for one of the company's divisions. We had about 500 PC, and 10 Apples. The Help Desk had five people working supporting the users. Four Help Desk Techs supported the 500 PCs, one was dedicated full time to supporting the 10 Apples.

We also had VAXs, Suns, and a few others that were handled by the development staff.

[300hpMR2]

I like being a switch hitter.

I started life with an Apple II+ and then moved on to the original Mac. Then I switched to PC for about 20 years. I became interested in Apples again only because they adopted the Intel chip so I bought a MacBook Pro. Nice computer but expensive as hell. I must say it ended up not being everything I expected.

My 2002 Dell laptop and 1997 Gateway laptop still run just fine. The Dell's DVD burner recently crapped out but that is a known issue.

[tvacc]

Originally Posted by 25psi_Elise_Killer

FYI, i bought a Dell Inspirion series a few months ago, and the hard drive failed on me not too long ago. Dell covered it under warranty.
Luckily, i backup my drive...."

Google recently completed a study of all of its hard drives installed all over the world. Dont remember how many (said in the document) but it was a heck of a lot.

Their conclusion was that the age of a hard drive has no correlation to when it will fail. It is all just a crap shoot.

Unscientifically that has been my belief all along. I tell people (and especially with notebooks...and especially with Toshiba notebooks, which regardless I like anyways....) that it is not if your hard drive will fail, it is when.

[charliex]

yeah i have a stack of hard drives that are dead from our various raid system, they were all bought at the same time, all did the same work in the same place, and have failed at different times, one after about two months.

[tvacc]

We buy Toshiba notebooks almost exclusivly. What we do and what we tell our customers is that once the Toshiba hard drive fails (yes they use their own hard drives) you dont even send it for warranty. Just go out and buy a western digital notebook drive and install it. After that it will give you no more HD problems

[gameson]

Charlie, I have a TR as well. Instead of spending new $$ on new laptop, you could have upgrade the HD to SSD HD, it's night and day difference. and it saves your battery life too.

[ZJChaser]

I'm a big fan of Dells Latitude line. I have the 12" Dell latitude for portability. They can be purchased with XP still from the business site of Dell. I will be putting a SSD into it shortly as well. the 1.8" HDD is soooooooooo slow.

[lotus4fun]

Main Page - OSx86

Works I was suprised, duel boot.


Eric

[charliex]

Yeah i wont give up my TR2A i already put the bluetooth module, upgraded it to wireless G and i have the extended battery , but its just too slow to handle Visual Studio 2008 and the graphics core doesn't have shader support etc, i really need DX9.

[ArchRival]

Originally Posted by ZJChaser

I'm a big fan of Dells Latitude line. I have the 12" Dell latitude for portability. They can be purchased with XP still from the business site of Dell. I will be putting a SSD into it shortly as well. the 1.8" HDD is soooooooooo slow.

FYI, Dell told me a couple of weeks ago that they will only be selling laptops with XP installed through June 15th.





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[Lancia]

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