Dell has me sold...... this laptop rocks..... rocks I say..... wireless.... 17" uxga high gloss lcd display,,,,, Intel T2500 duel core 2ghz processor.... ati radeon xt1400 mobile media.... 1gig ram.... yadda fuckin' yadda.... it is blazing fast.....

Dell does make very good laptops..... I dunno about thier desktops but the laptops are worth every dollar....

i'd rather buy a MAC

I had thought about that.... but this is more compatable with all the office software I intend to use.... I also just loaded oblivion and it runs smooth and sweet

ya, i'd still rather buy a MAC. open source software works just fine for me

I have an Inspiron 5150.

MACs are evil. They hate me.

Inspirons are cool.... mine is a beefed E1705....

How much did you pay for it Dyshade?

$2,000.00 on the nose.... at $60 a month it ain't a bad deal.... I just need to get an external hard drive and I am all set.....

It might be cheaper to buy an internal HD and then an external case. I found that looking at prices up here when I thought of doing that.

I looked at that as well. Tigerdirect has a Seagate 7200RPM 250Gig Internal with an External Case combo for $99.00 right now afetr a 50$$ rebate which ain't bad at all. Or you could go with the Phantom Force 500Gig External for 399 which is spendy lol

That and I need to get an External DVD burner.

My internal HD in the Laptop is only a 60 Gig at 7200RPM, a hitachi.

Buy a NexStar GX and put in whatever hard drive you want. This enclosure fuckin rocks.

I will have to look at that.... I just want something discreet I can mount under the counter as a storage drive My shop computer shall be the same.... a rack mount case bolted under the counter with extension cables to the monitor and key/mouse..... so I can have full control behind the counter.....

you could always go bluetooth for keyboard and mouse to eliminate the need for those annoying extension cables. I just got mine set up, I love it...and yes, be sure to check out the NexStar, its what I use for my backup drive, and you can turn it off when not needed to protect it from virus/surges.

I got a logitech wireless usb mouse..... yay....

get a logitech MX5000

I have had a somewhat moderately good experience with Dell, I own the first generation Dell XPS, it's basically a 15.4 UXGA screen with a Radeon 9700 put behind it, 40 GB hard drive and a massive 3GHZ Pentium 4.

Basically its rubbish. The laptops first of all aren't actually made by Dell, but more a set of selected 3rd party companies that supply the parts while Dells secondary company takes care of putting them together. So already its not strictly a Dell your sitting on your lap.

Next is the process and selection of parts, while Dell has gotten better, its hardwae is strangly set in one single time, now that mobile GPU and processor technology has moved on Dell seems to be sitting firmly in the same place. Its still using the old 6800 Ultra nVidia cards and still charges an absolute fortune for its RAM.

I think the most harsh problem about Dell is not really the hardware its self but the software, in my laptop also known as the Inspiron 9300 has very specific set drivers for the 9700, meaning that ATI don't directly support the company with its driver or software support, unlike Alienware or Rock.

This means we are stuck with the same old driver all of the time, meaning newwer games that released will begin to suffer as I played Tribes Vengeance for a while, as soon as I got the update for it the speed was halfed as well as loading tme and so on. Things ot worse as the cooling setup of the laptop wouldn't last more than 3 weeks without getting a tick blanket of dust over the internal radiators (set infront of the fans cold air flow. This meant that all the stuff would oftern run hot enough to cok even an english man's breakfast well enough.

My last problem is simply the keyboard, so far the keys on mine have broken twice, the first time I will admit it had tea on it so it was messed up anyway, but just a week later and another key fell off after it was reapaired by Dell.

My view on their laptops therefore goes litrally so far, just unimpressed considering I could have bought something far more efficent shuld I have searched just a tiny bit longer on the net :/

what is the average cost of a laptop today?

Well the only thing bad about mine is its battery life. The Inspiron E1705 has been reviewed as one of the fastest laptops in its class. Nor do I have a ultra 6800 card. I have a Radeon XT1400Mobile which basically kicks fucking ass on anything I throw at it
I have had it for over a month now and not a single problem besides a few driver issues. All of which are rapidly corrected easily and with no problems.

Average is 1,000.

They go as low as 500 and as high as 3000++{

Don't get me wrong mate, your laptop rocks but for a similar cost you could have had something with a far more powerful and reliable GPU, better Processor (mainly the Turion based CPU's) and basically easier to support. Your money your choice, otherwise its cool