Is this a good computer?

[Nitecrawler]

No, I was just telling you about my experience. Go for the T8300.

 

[xvart]

Someone else can correct me because I'm not sure this exactly correct, but in layman's terms: the first number is the raw power of the machine. The cache is the storage of open programs and temporary files, making quicker access to things you use the most. Both would be fine, I'm sure.

xvart.

 

[Nepenthes]

I messed around with some of the configs on Dell and I would recommend a few modifications. First I would go with 3 GB ram instead of 4, and after you buy the laptop I would switch to XP (you can't order it through dell). XP can only use 3 GB of ram so this will save you a little bit of cash (50$). Also I would get the 160 GB hard drive instead of spending 100$ more for 40GB boost to 200Gb. I would also get the higher resolution monitor (1680x1050). You should also spring 100$ more for the two battery combo: 1 x 6Cell, and 1 x 9Cell. The 6 cell won't stick out the back and would be good for carrying around and short useage. The 9 cell will last longer and can be a backup if you plan on using the laptop without a plug for an extended period of time. The batteries aren't all that important, but if you don't want to be bound to cords you may want to explore this option. Bluetooth and wireless USB really aren't that necessary unless you plan on carrying a bunch of peripherals with you. If you do have peripherals, you can always just leave them at home and plug them in there when you need to. I would also ditch the extended Antivirus software, and stick with the free 15 month offer. This will only save you 19$ but Antivirus software is crap IMHO. Just be a conscientious user and you won't ever have a virus problem (I haven't for like 6 years). Lo Jack is not a bad idea, especially in college. This is also included in the accident forgiveness plan, and you can add it to your 3 year plan for 150$. I would also upgrade the CPU to at least 2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB, 3MB Cache or the 2.5GHz option with 6MB cache.

Here it is with 2 batteries and 2.4GHz CPU
SYSTEM COLOR Tuxedo Black edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB, 3MB Cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition edit
LCD AND CAMERA High Resolution glossy widescreen 15.4 inch LCD(1680x1050) & 2MP Camera edit
MEMORY 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms) edit
HARD DRIVE Speed: 160GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive Free Fall Sensor edit
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write) edit
VIDEO CARD 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT edit
WIRELESS CARDS Dell Wireless 1490 802.11a/g Mini Card edit
BATTERY OPTIONS 6-cell Primary Battery and 9 -cell additional Lithium Ion Battery edit
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0 edit
FINGERPRINT SCANNER Finger Print Reader XPS M1530 edit
My Software & Accessories
ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE Trend Micro Internet Security 15-months edit
PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE No Microsoft Office edit
ADOBE Adobe Photoshop + Premiere Elements edit
My Service
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 3Yr In-Home Service, Parts Labor, 24x7 Phone Support edit
ACCIDENT AND THEFT PROTECTION Add Accidental Damage and LoJack Theft Protection to 3Yr Warr. edit
DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP Included 10GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Year edit
DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS No ISP requested edit
ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM
Dell Printer Driver Windows Vista™ Premium
Software - Adobe Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1
Processor Branding Intel Core 2 Duo Processor

2,222$

 

[Nepenthes]

The first number is the processing speed, that is how many calculations your processor can perform. The cache is like super fast RAM, that enables your CPU to quickly access small files. Unless you plan on doing heavy multitasking you won't notice much of a difference between 3MB cache and 4.

 

[Clint]

You said you'd personally get 3 gigs of memory rather than 4. What does that mean, to me, and how is this different from ram? I mean, to me, more is better and faster. But of course, I don't know what i'm talking about lol.

I like the way Vista looks, and the Aero looks cool lol. Why do you hate it?

 

[vraev]

Currently that XPS is the top of the line of affordable laptops. Mine is an Inspiron 9300 when it was the maxed out DEll pc 3 yrs ago. I loaded it up with 2 GB DDR2 RAM, 256 MB Geforce 6800 Go, true life screen wiht 1920 x 1200 res. I love the resoltion. I am NEVER EVER going back to lower res screens. I love the size of the desktop and the quality...and this is definately what you will love as well.....unless you are like "older ppl who tend to love BIG text + bigger sizes of windows etc". Good buy! A steal for 1500 $. I bought mine for 2000$ at that time and that was a steal.

BTW...I use Windows Vista Ultimate since it released. Its perfect IMO. Ppl keep complaining about it....but once u get used to it...its hard to go back to XP....you miss the neat features like bread crumbs bar and so on. Its a great and probably the Best OS microsoft has released so far. it will only keep getting bigger.

Don't worry....Mass effect is being made very very scalable and you should be fine with that PC. Heck! I run Gears of war maxed out at like 1280 by 720 res on my laptop dude. Yours should kill it.

EDIT:: NOTE:: sorry! the 1920 by 1200 res is only on a 17 inch notebooks...not on the 15 inch ones.

 

[Nitecrawler]

I liked vista for a while, I was running Vista Ultimate. It was really cool and I liked it but it is not fully compatible with everything yet. I had some hardware problems with it, which eventually led to me reinstalling XP.

You should be fine with it, since Dell *should* have good hardware compatibility with Vista.
Just be sure to turn UAC off when you get it. Vista can be annoying with its OCD security measures that ask you every 5 minutes if it's ok to do something.

 

[Nepenthes]

Memory is RAM (random access memory). I say I would go with 3 Gb because windows XP can only use up to 3 GB. As a testament to the shortcomings of vista, windows planned a replacement for this OS mere months after Vista's release (I believe called Windows 7). Vista is overbloated with all those effects that everyone likes... These same effects can be added to XP via modifications, and so Vista is in essence a repackaged flowered up version of XP. Also, if you want to utilize the full 4 GB of memory, you will need the 64bit version of Vista, which I believe is vista ultimate, which also comes with an additional 150$ price tag via Dell (I may be wrong about this, but I am fairly certain the Home version is 32bit). Either way, when you order that laptop you are going to get vista, period. Whether or not you want to upgrade to Ultimate and 4 GB of memory is up to you. If I were you though, I would get the Vista Home edition and I can send you a corporate version of ultimate if you really want it... 4GB might be a good idea with vista, because it uses up so much RAM just to run.

Daniel

 

[vraev]

well....I am currently using 2 GB of ram......and i find its fine...waaaay better than 1 GB for sure. I am not sure about more RAM though. However, I am using a 4 GB Readyboost feature as well. But still....with pc's its always good to go maxed out on that particular model within reasonable price as pC's are bad things for investment. Get a laptop that shall satisfy you for 4 yrs atleast.

 

[larry]

Vista sucks, I have Business on one machine, and Ultimate on another. Don't get 4 gb of ram, Vista and XP won't see all 4gb. I have 4gb and Vista can only recognize 3.3gb of it.

 

[Nepenthes]

Vista sucks, I have Business on one machine, and Ultimate on another. Don't get 4 gb of ram, Vista and XP won't see all 4gb. I have 4gb and Vista can only recognize 3.3gb of it.

Yea that's what I was saying.. unless you use a 64 bit version.

 

[Clint]

This is what I decided on. I'll be ordering Monday.

XPS M1530, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T9300 (2.5GHz/800MHzFSB, 6M L2 Cache) (223-5877)

Alpine White Casing with High Gloss Finish XPS M1530 (313-5825)

4GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm, for XPS M1530 (311-7823)

15.4 inch Wide Screen WSXGA+ TrueLife for XPS M1530 (320-6288)

256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT (320-6082)

200G 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive Free Fall Sensor (341-6256)

8X DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive for XPSM1530 (313-5820)

Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy (313-5014)

Intel 4965AGN Wireless-N Mini-card (430-2449)

Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module (2.0+EDR) (430-2566)

Intel Centrino Core Duo Processor (310-9348)


I decided to max out the insurance and extended warranties They'll be giving me a $70 Dell gift card and some online Lord of the Rings game. I think I'll use the gift card to buy a set of Bluetooth headphones.

I LOVE living in the 21st century

 

[JB_OrchidGuy]

I think your spending too much on it for a bunch of crap your not going to need for just school work. I would rather spend the extra money on a 17 inch lappy. I got mine for 1000 bucks 17 inch HP with an AMD 2.2 ghs dual core turion. You did get the extended service which I added later with accident protecion for 300 bucks, and your comes with 4 gigs of ram instead of 2 like mine, but hey. It si all in hwo much you want to spend and where you put your value. I think yours has a larger cache than mine does too to that also helps, but dunno how muc difference you would see jsut surfing the net and doing homework.

 

[JB_OrchidGuy]

Clint I understand wanting to go big, but what are you going to be using the computer for other than school work?

and that is the first I heard about vista only being able to recognize 3.3 gigs of ram, but then again I have never had more than 2. I could have sworn XP could use alot more than that. Why the backing off on the ammount of ram?

 

[Clint]

Hehe, unfortunately 17 inches wasn't an available option, and given the great sale they have until April 3rd, I felt compelled to go with the XPS. In all honesty, I probably would have bought an XPS (although one not quite as expensive/powerful) had there not been a sale. I like Dell I'll be using this for more than school work. I'll be using it like any desktop. Downloading lots of music, pictures, watching streaming videos, and maybe play games ever now and then. Mass Effect comes out in May and I've got to have Mass Effect

I wanted to get more than I needed so I won't have to upgrade or get a new computer for a decade, ideally. I asked a Dell sales rep about that and he thought this would easily last a decade.

I did not understand why it says it has a core 2 duo processor in one line (see above), then a core duo in another line.

 

[larry]

Clint I understand wanting to go big, but what are you going to be using the computer for other than school work?

and that is the first I heard about vista only being able to recognize 3.3 gigs of ram, but then again I have never had more than 2. I could have sworn XP could use alot more than that. Why the backing off on the ammount of ram?

This has confused many, myself included. It's funny reading all the crazy ideas people come up with to explain this. But this is what's happening:

"...To address 4GB of memory you need 32 bits of address bus. (Assuming individual bytes are addressable.) This gives us a problem - the same problem that IBM faced when designing the original PC. You tend to want to have more than just memory in a computer - you need things like graphics cards and hard disks to be accessible to the computer in order for it to be able to use them. So just as the original PC had to carve up the 8086's 1MB addressing range into memory (640K) and 'other' (384K), the same problem exists today if you want to fit memory and devices into a 32-bit address range: not all of the available 4GB of address space can be given over to memory.

For a long time this wasn't a problem, because there was a whole 4GB of address space, so devices typically lurk up in the top 1GB of physical address space, leaving the bottom 3GB for memory. And 3GB should be enough for anyone, right?

So what actually happens if you go out and buy 4GB of memory for your PC? Well, it's just like the DOS days - there's a hole in your memory map for the IO. (Now it's only 25% of the total address space, but it's still a big hole.) So the bottom 3GB of your memory will be available, but there's an issue with that last 1GB. .."

 

[phissionkorps]

I got a Inspiron 1520 for graduation, and I'm quite happy with it. The only thing that sucks is my dad got me the crappy screen so it doesn't have a very wide viewing angle.

My specs:
Intel Core Due CPU @ 1.66 GHz
2G RAM (pagin file set to 3.069G)
160GB HD
and a bunch of other crap I don't remember. The comp has some great stuff on the sides....a switch to turn wireless off, 4 USB ports, and my fav...an SD card slot.