laptop

[aintnothang]

fry's, it is a lot farther....but could be worth it.

[aintnothang]

I like best buy because some laptops had the windows 7 free upgrade!

[Zephik]

Oooh, that free upgrade would be nice. Windows 7 isn't going to be cheap, it never is. Hmmm...

Well I still say you should get a Studio. My best friend bought one and I played around with it quite a bit. Pretty solid, good feeling laptop. Looks great too. Thats probably why they cost a bit more than other brands, just higher quality control believe it or not. Dell really has come a long way from the old days. lol (I don't know about the XPS series btw, never got to play around with one, I'm just referring to the regular Studio line)

But for $750 you get a pretty nice machine, spend a bit more like around your new price range and you get pretty much everything you want. Quality, performance, plenty of memory and plenty of space. The $750 model at Best Buy has 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB Memory, 500GB HDD but a standard onboard chipset. I think the 4500 series, which isn't too bad but if you spend a bit more you can get a dedicated card. As far as the dedicated cards go, I'd say anything they sell these days should be more than adequate. Like I said before, I have a pretty outdated GPU and it plays oblivion on medium settings and you'd think anything these days would be much better than a 4 year old laptop.

I think the Studio line also gets pretty decent battery life. When on the best buy website you can select which models have which battery life and the minimum for the studio line says 4.5hrs to 5.5hrs.

Edit: I don't think any of the Studio's at Best Buy have dedicated cards, at least not on their website. You might have to check in-store. lame.

[aintnothang]

When I go down there I'll see if I like the dells, if I do I'll go home and build it the way I like. Dell website says the laptop I built is eligible for free windows 7!

[x88x]

When I go down there I'll see if I like the dells, if I do I'll go home and build it the way I like. Dell website says the laptop I built is eligible for free windows 7!

Haha, yes. That's the way to do it

In my experience, Dell's laptops follow about this:

_Consumer_
Inspiron: crap, though progressively less crap as time goes on
XPS: overpriced, but overall acceptable
Studio: nice, pretty solid, good price point
Studio XPS: basically, Dell's premium Consumer laptop. very nice, but very expensive

_Business_
Vostro: think Inspirons marketed towards small businesses. they're sometimes the exact same hardware, just in a black casing instead of shiny/colorful
Precision: workstation class, great internals, but oddly enough, kinda crappy kb/m on the previous generation (I haven't seen any of this current gen). almost like the inputs were an afterthought (used the same hardware as on that gen Inspirons)
Latitude: this is the only line of Dell laptops that I would buy myself. historically have always had nice build quality, but are getting increasingly better. the current generation is the nicest Dell laptops I have ever handled (yes, even nicer than the Studio XPS line)

[Zephik]

You nailed it x88x! And good idea aintnothang, that's what i usually do. I go to stores and browse things, then hop onto the nearest computer (usually my touch - rip) and order it from like Amazon. lol

"Can I help you sir?"

"Nope, just shopping around on Amazon. Man you guys are overpriced!"

"Please leave sir."

XD

[x88x]

"Can I help you sir?"

"Nope, just shopping around on Amazon. Man you guys are overpriced!"

"Please leave sir."

XD

Hahaha, nice. That's why you mention that to the people working at the tech desk, not the random sales reps Last time I went to Best Buy, I was looking for a DDR3-SODIMM (which they don't carry, btw, but they were close...) and the guy actually got me directions and store hours for a Microcenter store about 30 minutes away

[aintnothang]

Last time I went they said they had no tweeters...I passed them on my way walking out. tisk, tisk.

[aintnothang]

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz/1066Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570

Those were the basic specs of the one I was building.

[billygoat333]

http://www.notebookcheck.com/

this website has helped me a lot in my quest for a new lappy, you can compare most of the newer mobile processors and GPUs. pretty sweet site. hope that helps.