<p>I am about to purchase a new laptop with the following specs and I'm totally clueless, am i making any bad choices? Please help, I have no idea what I'm doing</p>
<p>Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735 (1.70 GHz/400MHz FSB)12.1-in WXGA
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home
512MB DDR SDRAM 2 Dimms
40 GB Hard Drive
24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless (802.11 b/g, 54Mbps)
Microsoft Office Basic - Includes Outlook, Word, Excel,
4-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery (32WHr)
8-cell Lithium Ion Additional Battery (65 WHr)
No Extended Service, Support or Ltd Warranty (I can extend later if needed, right?)
Free Dell Color Printer 720</p>
<p>Shipped it will be $986.</p>
<p>I am going to be a liberal arts student. It will be my primary computer, mostly just for work, email, IM, music etc.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your help, since I pretty much don't even know what any of the above means...</p>
<p>That's a pretty good deal. I would suggest going to circuit city or best buy and comparing the deal. But this is a good one. I don't know if you can extend the warranty, it's best to do it now.</p>
<p>Dell does not offer extended warranties that you can purchase "later." If you want to extend, you need to purchase at same time as your purchase of the computer, which I recommend doing. Otherwise, the computer is fine for your purposes and fairly priced. If you intend to play music on it, you will need to purchase decent speakers (built in ones are not that great for music) although you can get those later and probably cheaper than from Dell.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No Extended Service, Support or Ltd Warranty (I can extend later if needed, right?)
[/quote]
You have to buy the extended warranty within 30 days of your PC purchase for most manufacturers (HP and Apple for sure, don't know Dell's policy though). Your config is ok for the most part, but DO NOT buy Microsoft Office from Dell. You can get it for much cheaper from either your college bookstore or an educational software retailer.</p>
<p>As far as speakers go, the latest Dell machines seem to have unusually good speakers, at least the 6000 and 9300 as I have heard their speakers. But I'm assuming you're getting the 700m, dunno about them yet.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I would suggest going to circuit city or best buy and comparing the deal.
[/quote]
If you do buy from those stores, NEVER buy the store's extended warranty. I have first-hand experience of the scam that you become a victim of.</p>
<p>Price wise, you can do much better than that from Dell. Check <a href="http://edealinfo.com/%5B/url%5D">http://edealinfo.com/</a> for coupon codes. Are you sure that you want that small of a monitor on your primary computer? If you have alot of music, get a larger hard drive.</p>
<p>Thanks for you help everyone. I actually was using one of those coupons to begin with, it configured for about 1600. In the end I chose to cancel the order and go with a 9300 as portability isn't a huge concern for me.
(When I changed the order, I went ahead and got the service/warranty, so thanks so much again)!</p>