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Old 04-19-2006, 06:16 PM   #1
dplax
Jack Burton
 

Join Date: July 19, 2003
Location: an expat living in France
Age: 38
Posts: 5,577
My current laptop has started to become quite outdated (especially the only 256 MB RAM and the 32 MB Intel graphics card), and it finally looks as though I have enough money for a new one. I'm not getting a desktop PC, because with studying abroad, carrying something that large is not an option.

I've been looking a lot at Dell PCs recently, and I have found a configuration, which looks pretty interesting for the price, just wanted to ask those here who know PC hardware better than me what they think about it. I need to use the PC for university (studying Computer Sciences, so that means being able to have dual-boot Linux and Windows, and being able to run programs like Visual Studio, MatLab, Delphi, JBuilder, etc...relatively easily) and would also like if it could run at Oblivion at least acceptably.

The configuration costs 1.6 k€ and the important specs are:

Inspiron 6400

Processor Intel ® Core™ Duo T2500 (2 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
Operating System Windows® XP Professionnel , SP2
Memory 1024 Mo (2x512) 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Graphics Card 256MB ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400, PCI-Express x16
Hard drive 100GB (5,400 rpm) Hard Drive


Also has integrated Wifi card, DVD+/-RW 8x drive and a 15,4" 1280x800 screen.

I do have a few questions though. Is it worth paying 300€ extra to double the RAM? And the other question is about the warranty. The 1.6k price includes a three year warranty. If I choose to only take one year of warranty, then the price becomes only 1.3k, which is quite a difference. Are Dell PCs reliable enough so that reducing the warranty is not too much of a risk?

[ 04-19-2006, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: dplax ]
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Old 04-19-2006, 06:35 PM   #2
johnny
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Join Date: April 15, 2002
Location: Utrecht The Netherlands
Age: 58
Posts: 16,981
Personally i think a one year warranty is more than enough, because it doesn't take much longer for me than a year to start thinking about all sorts of upgrades, in which case you mostly forfeit the warranty, but suit yourself.

I do believe an extra 300€ for an additional 1024 MB of RAM is a clear ripoff though. Way too much money for such a basic upgrade.
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Old 04-20-2006, 03:09 AM   #3
Hivetyrant
Jack Burton
 

Join Date: August 24, 2002
Location: Aussie now in the US of A!
Age: 37
Posts: 5,403
Don't know if I mentioned this on MSN (was at work) But when it comes to reliability, I have found Dell have one of the best records (I know some people will argue this, but im talking about laptop's not desktop's, thats another argument )
As I mentioned, I have helped heaps of people at work buy laptop's (since I have been working there, about 26) and even conviced my new superintendant (used to work at IBM and was a huge thinkpad fan) to get a Dell, and I have had 0% problems with any of them, I am in charge of all the laptop's at work and have only ever had 2 problems with any of them, one had a dead hard drive.... Because someone dropped it out of a Ute [img]tongue.gif[/img] The other had some faulty RAM.

Granted, they were Laditude's and not Inspirons, b ut the differences are not huge.

Now for the service.......
Some people have had bad experiances, in fact many have, but I deal with them on a daily/weekly bases for repaires and what not, and have never had an issue adn have quite often given positive feedback to their team, but then again, I have never been unfortunant enough to get put onto someone in Bombay.

Hope this helps [img]smile.gif[/img]

(No I don't work for Dell [img]tongue.gif[/img] )
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