Christmas present to myself

[servotron]

Just ordered a Dell Inspiron E1505. Pretty nice specs, decent price. I sorta cheaped out on some stuff (could have gotten a faster CPU/bus and the same with the ram, 7200 RPM HD etc... but it would have been an extra 250 bucks total or so and it's not worth it to me for that performance increase. and I didn't get the bigger battery, because I rarely need to go for more than 2 hours without a plugin. Expect a full review once I've had a week or two to screw around with it (won't be here till Jan at some point).

AAAAaaaand ... the specs:

- Intel Core Duoprocessor T2050(2MB/1.60GHz/533MHz)
- 15.4 Inch WSXGA+ (1440 x 900 or 1680 x 1050, I dont remember..either is OK with me)
- 2GB, DDR2, 533MHz 2 Dimms
- ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 256MB HyperMemory
- 80GB 5400RPM SATA
- 10/100
- 24X Combo CD-RW/DVD
- SoundBlaster Advanced Audio
- Dell Wireless 1390 802.11b/g Mini Card
- 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion
- Integrated Bluetooth (assuming that someday I get a bluetooth mouse)

Should be a pretty bitchin machine. When I get it I'll just have to install all my dev and design shit, toast 99% of the crappy preinstalled software, put OpenOffice (which I'm now quite fond of) and be ready to roll. Dude, I'm gettin' (another) Dell.

[FearM9]

Congrats!

Santa brought me the 1501 earlier this month. In hindsight I shoulda put the 1505 on my list, but oh well.

So far I'm happy with it for what I do...which isn't much. Just surf the net and burn/copy discs. I don't game or work on complex work stuff.

[servotron]

I got this one pretty decked out so I could do all my work (web/graphic design) as well as play Battlefield 2, which this setup should do quite well at. It shipped today, yay!

[FearM9]

I don't know what everyone else's experience is with Dell, but when I ordered my laptop over Thanksgiving weekend...I ran into some minor issues here and there. Their customer service has been great...via online chat, over the phone, and through email.

[servotron]

I don't know what everyone else's experience is with Dell, but when I ordered my laptop over Thanksgiving weekend...I ran into some minor issues here and there. Their customer service has been great...via online chat, over the phone, and through email.

I've personally owned 2 other dell laptops in the past and they have both proven to be excellent long-haul machines even with the relatively heavy punishment I dole out on them both software-wise and physically.

Actually I've never really had a bad laptop experience, also having had a Compaq Evo N610c and my current beast, a ProStar 888E. I chalk my "luck" up to knowing how to fix things that go wrong, and not letting things get to the point where they CAN go wrong. AKA, you make your own luck. If I ever have a hardware failure that's one thing, but having owned 5 or 6 laptops over the last 10 years, I can say I've never (knock on wood) had any sort of a hardware failure that wasn't really easy to deal with (battery, etc).