Is this a good deal for a laptop?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>Because I am going to UT Austin, Dell is offering me some special deal for one of their laptops, and I was wondering if you were in my shoes would you take it? </p>

<p>Inspiron E1505 w/Printer, BT, 128mbkey, & Backpack
Featured at
$1,369</p>

<p>Bullet Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2400 (2MB Cache/1.83GHz/667MHz FSB)
Bullet Genuine Windows® XP Professional
Bullet PC Restore recovery system by Symantec
Bullet 15.4 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen SXGA+ Display with TrueLife™
Bullet 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
Bullet 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
Bullet Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Bullet 100GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
Bullet Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy® ADVANCED HD Audio
Bullet 128MB Dell™ USB Memory Key</p>

<p>Bullet 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Bullet Nylon Backpack Carrying Case
Bullet I chose McAfee included with the Starter, Silver, Gold or Platinum Package.
Bullet 4Yr LtdWarr, At-Home, CompleteCare, 30Day DOC, PC Training, 2Yr AntivirusSuite
Bullet Dell Wireless 1390 802.11b/g Mini Card (54Mbps)
Bullet Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth Internal (2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate)
Bullet Stereo Speakers
Bullet Dell 924 Printer with 1 Yr Advanced Exchange
Bullet Logitech - V270 Cordless Optical Bluetooth Notebook Mouse - Silver
Bullet Dell Black 10 Ft. USB Printer Cable</p>

2

<p>That sounds like one hell of a deal. Do you know how much it would cost without the discounts?</p>

3

<p>Id wait till august to get the newer Core 2 duo(merom) processor from intel, it will have 64bit compatability and have more cache. It will also make the core duo chips go on clearence and be much cheaper.</p>

<p>No reason to get a laptop now.</p>

<p>But the reason this laptop is cheap is</p>

<p>Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950</p>

<p>which is good but not amazing but good enogh for anything a standard use would need it for.</p>

<p>also i dont know If ya really need pc training? seems like alot of money to waste on stupidity.</p>

4

<p>It said it would cost 2,439 without the discount; so around 50% savings. Also PC training is standard, and I can't add or delete it. However I can upgrade to a better video card for around 100 more dollars.</p>

5

<p>I was just customizing a e1705 a little bit ago. Upgraded it to a T2600, with a lot of extras. The price kept updating when I changed stuff, and it came to about $2,200, and I had a $750 off coupon. But when I added it to my cart, the price jumped to over $3,000, then subtracted a little over $1,000 because of some Dell deal, then I couldnt add my own coupon, so it was still over $2,000, it really made me mad. I couldnt understand why the price jumped to over $3,000. Anybody know?</p>

6

<p>is your coupon a rebate that you have to mail in afterwords?</p>

7

<p>make sure this laptop is vista upgradable or it will be obsolete quickly. I know most being made are but I am not sure about dell.</p>

8

<p>"is your coupon a rebate that you have to mail in afterwords?"</p>

<p>No, I found it online.</p>

9

<p>
[quote]

make sure this laptop is vista upgradable or it will be obsolete quickly. I know most being made are but I am not sure about dell.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>have you actually used Vista yet. im a beta tester for the MSDN, I get stuff way before the public and I can tell ya, if you can get a new pc at a very good price its not worth it. I waited till around 2003 to move to xp due to how weak it actually was.</p>

<p>Now I barly use xp and when I do it usually takes me 3-4 hours of configurations and code rewrites of microsofts mistakes. thogh I have made a unattended install of this, it is still a hassle.</p>

10

<p>Vinny -- does that mean that you think Vista will probably be a waste of time for a while and that if you can get a good deal on a laptop that will run XP well for now its probably worth it?? Vista is a brand new OS and perhaps it'll take a year or two or three before its worth switching to? Like your experience with XP? I'm kinda confused by your posts here...</p>

11

<p>Vista isnt out yet...</p>

12

<p>This is true for just about any operating system that is released. You should never get it right away because there are going to be a lot of security holes and bugs. Even public beta testing would not take care of all the bugs and holes on a program upon release because not everyone wants to take part of beta testing, they just want a final release.</p>

13

<p>It's being released as a beta.</p>

14

<p>so is a Duo Core machine worth buying now or not?</p>

15

<p>well i'm looking to get a tablet pc and i know i'll be waiting until august. the reason being is that I'm going to go all out on that tablet and won't have another one for a long time. so really it depends on how long you see yourself with that laptop. you have a good deal there though. i know it's not giving you a clear definitive answer but I don't even know what I'd do in that situation.</p>

16

<p>I'm not the OP but I've got very similar pricing on an E1705 with similar features. Just not sure if the Core Duo processor(s) for laptops is worth the investment or not, but I suspect it will last for 3 or 4 years at which point I'll be buying a new computer anyway...</p>

17

<p>Ha I actually confused both of you. Oh well it sounds like you'll be just fine with getting the laptop now and getting a new one when the time comes.</p>

18

<p>As to end_ dudes questions.</p>

<p>At first I found windows XP to be insecure and full of flaws, well even today it is still that but nothing is perfect we can only make things better than what they were in the past. I used Windows 98 for a while and then switched to windows ME (which many say is horrible, but I found it to be a decent transition model from Win 98 to XP). When Windows XP first came out, I installed it right away and found it to be a nice upgrade but it didn’t have the best support and was full of coding errors. I waited until 2003 for the use of XP, and I found it to have been worked on greatly by Microsoft. It was acceptable for my needs. I am computer engineering major and I tend to know a lot more than the average folk about how computers work and the programming and machine code that makes them work. Most probroly don’t care about this stuff and that’s really understandable. MS windows XP as most MS programs are written in a very raw mode, the programmers and systems engineers are told and paid to pretty much get the thing working with the least time possible. As time goes on things tend to get better and better, we can see this trend with almost all products. So at first no product is its best and well even with a beta it has not been tested to its fullest. </p>

<p>So at this time as I’ve used Vista I can’t recommend it, firstly because this is a college board and well we do our school work on our computers. Now as I said earlier not all the problems in the code of the operating system can be see a at the release, Its impossible and this is why we have updates, Windows update for example. Or the newest Video Drivers.</p>

<p>Id really recommend waiting till at least the first major service pack, till I would move to the new OS. I am judging this on MS prior products and releases, such as Windows 98; we needed a whole new version to come out because of problems and USB support. </p>

<p>Microsoft does say things will be different this time, but only time will tell and I wouldn’t take there word when my school work is on the line.</p>

<p>
[quote]

So is a Duo Core machine worth buying now or not?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>In August Intel will release the Core 2 Duo processor code named Merom; it will have 64 bit compatibility with a 64bit version of an operating system of your choice and 64 bit applications of your choice. The Higher end Core 2 Duo chips will have 4 MB of l2 cache, which is your systems memory but it is on the processors actual chip. The chips as with everything new will be more expensive when they are first released, but with this the standard and current Core Duo chips will be on clearance and will be a lot cheaper. This will result in the current laptops being much cheaper and there will be big sales, the same way there was when the Core duo's came out after the standard Pentium M.</p>

<p>To be honest id much rather use windows for Compatibility, but if you like Fancy desktops like what Vista will deliver, you may as well get an Apple, or wait till the new Core 2 Duo chips come out and get an apple MacBook or MacBook Pro.</p>

<p>OS X Tiger and the soon to be released Panther both are ran atop a Darwin BSD core. You may wonder what a Darwin BSD core is. Well it is a BSD Kernel which is the way that the University of California, Berkeley has chosen to write this kernel and it is atop a Pure UNIX Module. This may be confusing and unclear, but I’m trying my Best. The kernel is the way the computer operates and manages its resources. It is also the way the software interacts with the hardware. BSD stand’s for Berkeley Software Distribution, and is atop UNIX and is true to UNIX. UNIX is an operating system developed in the late 1960's by bell labs and has pretty much been a force that cannot be beaten. Others try but it doesn’t happen. UNIX is also what runs almost all the serves that make our complex Human Infrastructure Possible. Phones, Internet, Satellites and a slew of other things. Why do people use it because it’s pretty much Rock solid and has close to 50 years of advancement.</p>

<p>Apple uses the BSD kernel, and then developed a mach Microkernel which is what makes OS X what it is today. You can download Darwin for free, but it doesn’t have the Microkernel here <a href="http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/&lt;/a>
And its 100% free.</p>

<p>OS X is very solid and a lot more solid that Windows, it just does not have the support of Windows in terms of Applications and Games mostly. But it’s a much better option.</p>

<p>I personally don’t like the glitz of Os X and Windows Vista. My desktop looks like this pretty much but with a grey text <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static.flickr.com/26/66130892_2bed7e67b9.jpg&imgrefurl=http://fuyichin.blogspot.com/2005/11/spreadsheet-on-unix.html&h=301&w=500&sz=135&tbnid=0FflUrrk4oNuYM:&tbnh=76&tbnw=127&hl=en&start=141&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dunix%26start%3D140%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static.flickr.com/26/66130892_2bed7e67b9.jpg&imgrefurl=http://fuyichin.blogspot.com/2005/11/spreadsheet-on-unix.html&h=301&w=500&sz=135&tbnid=0FflUrrk4oNuYM:&tbnh=76&tbnw=127&hl=en&start=141&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dunix%26start%3D140%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I run FreeBSD and it is Solid and that’s why I use it.</p>

<p>I hope this may have helped some people, if not I’m sorry and I’m sorry for my grammar and spelling. I know it needs work.</p>

<p>I am not sure if you will get a good deal like this again, thogh you never know that you could get a better one in the future.</p>

19

<p>Thanks Vinny. I don't mean this in a bad way at all; you've just raised more questions than answers. LOL.</p>

20

<p>well ask them Id be glad to try.</p>

<p>To break it down the Duo Core is not worth it now as the new chip in august is capable of processing 2x more information than the current and has 2x the memeory on higher models.</p>

<p>as for a laptop now, as i said a duo core now is probrolly not worth it, but you better be sure that the newer models of laptops with the core 2 duo chips will almost all be vista compatable. Its a marketing thing. </p>

<p>if you can get a really cheap laptop that is not vista compatable or has the current Core duo, It has to be a decision you need to make.</p>

<ol>
<li> you could get the computer now and enjoy it.</li>
<li>you could wait and get whats actually best for your money.</li>
<li>you may like Vista and want to make sure your laptop is capable.</li>
</ol>

<p>if I needed a laptop today, i would not wait on a deal like this because well its 50% off and computers are expensive.</p>

<p>If I needed a computer for the Fall, I would wait as the 64 bit and 2x the cache is well worth it to me.</p>