[digitalwanderer]

Inspiron 1705

-Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5200 (1.60GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB)
-Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
-Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium from XP Media Center Edition
-17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
-1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
-120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
-24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
-256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory
-Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™ HD Software Edition
-80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
-Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/g
-Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Internal (2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate)

-FREE Dell Color Ink Jet Printer 725

$1,352.56 after taxes and shipping

Yes/no?

My wife has her heart set on a 17", so please don't tell me to get a 15.4.

[Skrying]

She'll regret the weight but other than that it appears you're ready to go.

[Thorburn]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

My wife has her heart set on a 17", so please don't tell me to get a 15.4.

Theres a reason that EVERYONE is saying that...

[digitalwanderer]

I know, and there is an E1505 for under $1000 that is pretty f-ing sweet too.

But it's to be her laptop, so she gets to pick.

[Skrying]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

I know, and there is an E1505 for under $1000 that is pretty f-ing sweet too.

But it's to be her laptop, so she gets to pick.

Before you buy it take her to Best Buy and make her hold a 17" in her hand (just one hand) and try to type on it. Then do the same for a 15". Both will be a pain, but the 15" much less so.

[digitalwanderer]

She doesn't plan to use it like that, she plans to just use it at work to watch stuff on.

[digitalwanderer]

Woke up this morning to my wife yelling at me for not ordering her laptop yet, her PC died this morning from a fatal hard drive......

[digitalwanderer]

Ordered and done, added the cheapest wireless router they had too along with an extry AC adapter.

[Natoma]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Inspiron 1705

-Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5200 (1.60GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB)
-Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
-Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium from XP Media Center Edition
-17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
-1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
-120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
-24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
-256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory
-Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™ HD Software Edition
-80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
-Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/g
-Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Internal (2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate)

-FREE Dell Color Ink Jet Printer 725

$1,352.56 after taxes and shipping

Yes/no?

My wife has her heart set on a 17", so please don't tell me to get a 15.4.

We're in the same conundrum actually. I'd upgrade the HD from 5400rpm to 7200rpm. She'll definitely notice the bump in application load time and file accessing. Other than that, I think you're set.

[Natoma]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Ordered and done, added the cheapest wireless router they had too along with an extry AC adapter.

Doh. Ah wells.

[digitalwanderer]

Appreciate the input Nate, but my wife rejected the 7200 bump anyway when I tried to talk her into it.

Dell wanted too much for it anyways, I'll just get a 7200 when the 5400 fails.

(I have very little faith in laptop HDs.)

[Frank]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

(I have very little faith in laptop HDs.)

They are on average better than desktop HDDs, considering that they are much smaller and what they go through.

If you have a good laptop, it's encased in a rubber shock-proof sleeve. And in industrial computers, they use almost exclusively laptop harddisks nowadays, in a spring suspension enclosure.

[digitalwanderer]

Really? Damn, my own limited experience with them must not be representative then.

I've personally never had a problem with a laptop HD and I've had a 30Gb 4200 in an external enclosure that I've been abusing for a few years now and it still works great, I only recently had to deal with two dead laptop HDs of my friend MauiMom.

Her Toshiba's HD died and I had to swap it out a couple of weeks ago, and she just asked me to take a look at her USB drive the other day and it's dead as a doornail.

I'll take your word for it though DiGuru, you know more about this than me....besides, it means I might not have my HD in the new laptop die.

Did I mention I already figured out the new laptop's name? (I name all my systems, I'm weird that way)

"Bertha", it's just too fitting.

[Frank]

The thing that goes wrong with laptop disks most often, is that they get locked in their arm "rest". When the drive isn't reading or writing data, the arms that carries the read/write heads are stored away in a safe, shockproof place. They can get stuck there, for example after being thrown on the table a bit too hard. You can hear that, as the drive will noticeably click once or a few times after connecting the power, and nothing else happens.

So, if you want it to live long and happily, be gentle with the laptop.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by DiGuru

The thing that goes wrong with laptop disks most often, is that they get locked in their arm "rest". When the drive isn't reading or writing data, the arms that carries the read/write heads are stored away in a safe, shockproof place. They can get stuck there, for example after being thrown on the table a bit too hard. You can hear that, as the drive will noticeably click once or a few times after connecting the power, and nothing else happens.

You described EXACTLY the problem with the laptop HD I had to replace.

I'll make sure Bertha is handled carefully, thanks for the warning.

Damn it, is it next year yet? I'm all ready to get this thing and start playing!

[Cartoon Corpse]

how easy is it to work on/upgrade a laptop? still basically plug and play? case opens easily? can you get laptop components fairly readily?

[Skrying]

Originally Posted by Cartoon Corpse

how easy is it to work on/upgrade a laptop? still basically plug and play? case opens easily? can you get laptop components fairly readily?

Extremely dependent on the model. Some laptops include ways to upgrade the video (the vast majority don't from my experience), replacing the processor can be a chore and you have to be careful the motherboard will work with it, and memory and hard drive being easily replaceable. Most of the time I've found upgrading laptops besides the hard drive and memory rather pointless, to get a performance improvement besides those two areas generally is not very cheap and therefore I'd simply suggest buying a new one. That's also why I tend to shy away from "gaming" laptops, they're a large and sometimes (upgrade wise) cumbersome investment.

[digitalwanderer]

SHIPPED!!!!

5 days ahead of schedule, me happy.

[digitalwanderer]

w00t-w00t-w00t-w00t-w00t-w00t-w00t-w00t!!!!

Turns out it shipped yesterday and is currently about 20 miles from here scheduled for delivery tomorrow.

Pretty pathetic that I used Google maps to figure out how far it actually was, but I'm a bit excited about this.

[suryad]

Congrats on the purchase. I have been personally holding out for the Santa Rosa platform due Q2 2k7 as I understand. FSB bumped up to 800 Mhz up from 667, 2.4 ghz clock, 64 bit capability, Robson cache support, and hopefully a geforce 8800 go to pair iwth that...mmhmm! Tax rebate here I come!

[digitalwanderer]

Oh man, this thing exceeds all my expectations by far. I'm happily blown away.

I gave up trying to un-install all the Dell crap and just re-partitioned the hard drive and installed XP pro on it. Took a while to find/figure out all the drivers, but I feel I know the laptop a lot better now.

Insanely fast boots since the re-install, like 45 seconds from off to ready. The screen is just f-ing gorgeous to me, after working on it for an hour I went back to my PC and the monitor looked fuzzy to me.

Very happy, and my wife is too.

[Frank]

Woot!

[digitalwanderer]

She actually cracked herself up today about it, she realized she's looking forward to going back to work just to see how it works out there with it.

I'm trying to figure out some decent games to load up to kill time with. Pinball games and some arcade games seem to play really nice on it to kill small bursts of time...

[Frank]

How about Baldurs Gate 2, if you need a female protagonist?

[digitalwanderer]

Nah, she'd never get into a RPG like that. Not her cup-o-tea.

I'm thinking some classic arcade games and such along with some good pinball games, those she'd play to kill a little time with at the store.

I dunno, I really don't. It's hard enough to pick games someone else might like, it's harder for me with my wife because I know she really doesn't have a taste in gaming yet....she's very eclectic and just likes what she likes.

I'll keep thinking on it, I already got her 120Gb hard drive down to 30Gb.