Decisions For A New Laptop What should I add?

[t3jem 0]

Well, my mom is buying me a graduation laptop and my budget is about $2500. This is the laptop I've found to be the biggest bang for the buck, but as I'm not great at this stuff I figured I'd ask for help. The speed and memory of the laptop is pretty much set at the speed it's at (2.5GB L2 6MB, 4 GB RAM, 640GB HDD). Also I don't want to lose bluetooth either.

So, if you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know, if you find better offers for the same machine I'd be happy to know about them as well. Thank you for your time!

SYSTEM COLOR Ruby Red editPROCESSOR IntelŽ Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz/800Mhz FSB/6MB cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows VistaŽ Home Premium Edition edit
DISPLAY Glossy, high contrast, widescreen 17.0 inch display (1440 x 900) edit
VIDEO CARD 256MB NVIDIAŽ GeForceŽ 8600M GT edit
MEMORY 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz edit
HARD DRIVE Dual: 640GB (2x 320) 5400RPM Hard Drive edit
OPTICAL DRIVE CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive) edit
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-Card edit
BLUETOOTH AND WIRELESS USB Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR) edit
BLUETOOTH AND WIRELESS USB Dell Bluetooth Keyboard and Optical Mouse edit
BLUETOOTH AND WIRELESS USB Dell Bluetooth Stereo Headset (w/built-in Mic) edit
INTEGRATED WEBCAM Integrated 2.0 Megapixel Webcam edit
BATTERY OPTIONS 9-cell Primary Battery and 9-cell additional Lithium Ion Battery edit
SOUND OPTIONS Integrated Sound BlasterŽ AudigyHD Software Edition edit
My Software & Accessories
ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE No Security edit
OFFICE SOFTWARE No Productivity software pre-installed edit
POWER OPTIONS 90 Watt Spare AC Adapter edit
POWER OPTIONS 4-Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Pocket Hub & Travel Surge Protector Bundle edit
My Service
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1Yr In-Home Service, Parts + Labor,24x7 Phone Support edit
DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr edit
DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS No ISP requested edit
ENVIRONMENTAL OPTIONS Support Reforestation: Plant a Tree for Me edit
ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM
Network Card Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
Adobe Software AdobeŽ AcrobatŽ Reader 8.1
Labels Windows Vista Premium
Processor Branding Intel Centrino Core Duo Processor
DOMS Camera Mod Premium Deep Rich Red with Soft Touch LCD back color w/ 2.0M pixel Camera
Miscellaneous Inspiron 1720
PHOTO AND MUSIC SOFTWARE No Entertainment software pre-installed

[OpaQue 15]

Check out offers from Toshiba in that price range :-) I m sure you will get something great! $2500 is good budget.

[kobra500 1]

I sell you mine for $2500 or ?1250 it has 192 mb ram 18gb HDD and no idea bout anything else because I don't care about it but if you wanna take the offer let me know b pm

[dre 0]

See if you can get a better battery, 9 cells seems a bit weak for that kind of cpu, ram and video card. However, if you don't plan on doing any multimedia/games or lots of wireless while using battery, then don't sweat it.

[Saint_Michael 3]

If I didn't know any better I say the specs you have are for a Dell XPS Desktop computer because it is impossible to dual hard drive a laptop without making the case a whole lot bigger. Of course if you plan to go with a Dell brand then the XPS laptops are just as good but of course you don't have much room for upgrading them, although get the stock is just as good as you can customize them later with memory and hard drive space. However, another recommendation I would make based off OpaQue's post and check out newegg's website on laptop.computers because you can get a some good one's at a cheaper price.

[Thingcubed 0]

Well, I spent about $1600 on a laptop a few months ago, and the best deal I found was from some company called M-Tech. http://www.m-techlaptops.com/shoponline/pc/home.asp

Don't know if you'll be able to find a better deal there or not, but I spent a lot of time trying to find the best quality/price ratio, and that's where I found it. I'm quite happy with the laptop I have right now, and I've had no trouble running newer games on it such as Gears of War and Crysis (the demo at least).

[t3jem 0]

Opaque: I checked toshiba, they don't quite offer the hardware I'm looking for even in a higher price range, but I still appreciate the suggestions.Kobra: .. I hope your kidding Dre: I actually upped the battery, default is 6-cell and 9-cell is the biggest and I got two of them, but even then I normally don't plan on using it off the cable anyways, but there are times when I want to.Saint_Micheal: Yea, I was looking for an XPS style laptop, but they were too expensive so I built an insperon which actuallly proved to be cheaper with more hardware in it, I never could get the 640GB HDD in the xps laptops, especially for $2500. I never thought about Newegg, but when I went to check, they didn't offer anything over 320GB HDD and that's one thing I'm not going to back down on :(Thingcubed: I checked that site out, it's kind of neat, but it doesn't offer anything on the level of this for the same price unfortunatlyThank you everyone for your replies, I am still open for more though, I may make my decision by this weekend.

[csp4.0 1]

consider some ASUS ones, they are ultimate at multimedia, and also dell laptops, I remember seeing a laptop with 19" screen at full HD resolution...That CPU sounds really good, but the 4GB of RAM is totally unecessary! especially if you are using a 32bit (86x) operating system it will only detect (and use) about 3GB which would waste the 4th GB. And does the DVD RW+- drive have dual layer and/or lightscribe technology?I assume that you are using American dollars, US$2500 seems pretty good for this offer, but you'll get heck of a lot better if you Made (hand built yourself) a desktop...

[t3jem 0]

Well, I checked out ASUS, and they have some good prices; however, I don't want to back out of 640GB of harddrive space. As for the DVD RW drive, I don't know, but I don't use my disk drive for burning that often anyways.Also, for building a desktop, I know I can build, or even buy one for half the price with twice the hardware, but I need a laptop because I move around so much, it's impossible for me to be happy with a desktop these days.

[sonesay 7]

consider some ASUS ones, they are ultimate at multimedia, and also dell laptops, I remember seeing a laptop with 19" screen at full HD resolution...
That CPU sounds really good, but the 4GB of RAM is totally unecessary! especially if you are using a 32bit (86x) operating system it will only detect (and use) about 3GB which would waste the 4th GB.

And does the DVD RW+- drive have dual layer and/or lightscribe technology?

I assume that you are using American dollars, US$2500 seems pretty good for this offer, but you'll get heck of a lot better if you Made (hand built yourself) a desktop...

Are you sure 32bit OS only can handle up to 3GB of memory? I'm sure it was more like 4GB max for a 32 bit OS. I don't remember the caculations for getting the max memory for this but I'm sure it was 4GB instead of 3GB. Anyone can clear this up?

As for your new Laptop wow I'm bl owned away thats some very impressive specs you can get for a laptop now a days. The hard drive space is incredible and the CPU speed is what impresses me the most. You didn't mention how fast your dvd burner was but I'm sure it will be fast enough. I've got a 4 speed dvd burner on mine and every time I have to burn a DVD its so slow.

Edit: I just search around the web on the memory thing and it does say something about 32bit CPU's being able to address only 4GB of memory but a chunk of that is used for devices so the amount of memory address available is minus that being used for devices. I think it varies form OS on how they allocate that. Maybe someone can shed more light on this?
Edited March 13, 2008 by sonesay (see edit history)

[Dooga 0]

I have just a few general comments, I don't know any specific laptop brand though.Hey, if you aren't afraid to switch to a Mac, I would highly recommend a MacBook Pro. Personally, I'm not a fan of the overpriced hardware, but they are extremely good quality, and the LCD screen is beautiful and way easier on the eyes compared to another laptop that you might find. Their designs are one of the best in the industry. And plus, you can still run Windows. Buy it for the hardware (however warning: their video cards suck, their RAM is too expensive and not at all priced correctly. I don't mind high-priced items, but I do not like over-priced items for what they are worth.)With a 2500$ budget, you can also think about Sony VAIO computers. Sony has also been known for overpricing items, but their items are designed with quality, although I haven't actually used them before. You can buy it for the company... Come on it's Sony!If you want, you should get a Tablet PC. It depends on what you're using the laptop for, but a Tablet PC can allow you to take notes very easily. It's a very good idea.

[t3jem 0]

For the DVD burner, I believe it's 8x, but I don't really plan on burning DVDs anyways so it doesn't matter for me, that just came standard.As for the 32-bit 64-bit thing, I have heard too that 32-bit OSes can only address around 3.4 or somewhere around there GB of memory; however, I plan on installing one or 2 64-bit OSes on my system so it's all good there.For sony, I have checked it out, but they don't offer any laptops with 640GB of HDD, which is something I really don't want to give up, and even without the 640GB, the rest of the hardware is still lower than than what I'm getting on this setup.An also for the tablet PCs, I have been seriously looking at those for college; however, i've been wanting a gaming computer for ages and this will be the first time I'll get one so i'm going to sacrifice the tablet for the games; however, I'm looking at selling my current computer stuff to afford another tablet PC with some lower specs from ebay or something for college, so I'll have one laptop for school and one for everything else.EDIT: Thank you for all your advise, it definitly solidified my views on this laptop. I just bought it today and even with a no-glare screen (the option suddenly showed up today, yay!). So thank you everyone for all your input!

Edited March 14, 2008 by t3jem (see edit history)