It all depends on what you are going to do with your laptop and how good you are taking care of it...

For example: DON'T charge your battery when it is HOT or the laptop is HOT or the environment is HOT. In Dell laptops, the battery is hot if the battery indicator light flashes alternately blue and amber. It will reduce your battery life. So, there is a reason why; if you want to use your laptop for quite a long time, it is better to remove your battery and use your AC adapter to power up your laptop. It is the same like you cannot change the battery water in your car's wet-battery when the car's engine environment area is still hot.

This post has been edited by eclectice: Apr 13 2008, 12:34 PM

The Nvidia Geforce 7150M in the first option is outdated http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphi...List.844.0.html

Even, the ATI X1100 in the second option is also outdated. Sigh...

Both are Year 2006 GPUs.

This post has been edited by eclectice: Apr 13 2008, 12:42 PM

Look inside the link if you want to compare CPU http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

If you don't trust the CPU benchmark results, you can sue the website...hehehe

Maybe, you can search for yourself, baby: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphi...List.844.0.html

Any laptop can do those tasks without a problem. But, when you start to have one or more application servers to test your codes (web server, ftp server, database server, smtp server, CVS server, etc), you should opt for faster disk access and speed for the hard disk (7200RPM harddisk), better CPU (2.0GHz or above) and 2GB or more system memory. Today's Microsoft products become more aggresive on memory and harddisk. Buying better hardware can speed up your routine work especially for laptops. Compilation will complete in shorter time.

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Added on April 13, 2008, 10:47 pmXPS M1530 for serious gaming and multimedia. I believe you will waste a lot of your study life playing games and watching HD animes. Hahahah

Seriously, XPS M1530 because of CPU choices: Intel T9300 or Intel T9500 which are the new 45nm fabrications. Asus brands only offer T7500 and T7300 which are Merom 65nm fabrications.
T9500 > T9300 > T7500 > T7300

GPU-wise: Asus F8SV and XPS M1530 has Nvidia 8600M GT: Asus F3SV has Nvidia 8600M GS. Nvidia 8600M GT > Nvidia 8600M GS

This post has been edited by eclectice: Apr 13 2008, 10:49 PM

This electric shock problem is also reported on other brands marketed in UK/Europe that use 2-pin power plug that does not have a ground pin, unlike here in Malaysia where we have 3-pin power plug system; it means that we are quite protected from the electrical shock, unless the 3-pin plug is faulty.



This post has been edited by eclectice: Apr 18 2008, 12:18 AM

All current laptops from 2007 are using Santa Rosa platform with the core chipset being the Intel 965 chipset (PM965/GM965). The Penryn processors that are available today is only the first generation Penryn.

The second generation Penryn will be available for Montevino platform with the core chipset being the Intel 45 chipset (one of them is GM45). This new platform will be able to utilize 800 MHz memory modules or above and with the support for DDR3 types. It will be launched in the middle of 2008.

You can use the latest CPU-Z software to identify your CPU.

This post has been edited by eclectice: May 5 2008, 02:46 AM

Yes, that's correct. And, the Montevina platform will be launched in the middle of 2008.

http://laptoping.com/intel-montevina-core-2-duo-penryn.html

This post has been edited by eclectice: May 6 2008, 09:17 AM

Both Dell Vostro 1400 and Dell Inspiron 1420 are more or less of the same weight (2.5 kg with a 6-cell battery). If you buy a 9-cell battery, it will be 2.9 kg.

90W AC adapter is required for a dedicated GPU option you choose for your Dell laptop.

Targus Defcon Lock's price is more or less the same like in the market. But, you can ask for more discount if you buy the lock from the market rather than from Dell. So, it is no need to add the lock option in your Dell specs. I suggest you to allocate the budget to buy the Complete Cover package and the 3-year Warranty service package.

This post has been edited by eclectice: May 23 2008, 06:56 AM

Please read the information provided in the link:

http://support.ap.dell.com/support/topics/...6384&doclang=en

Notebookcheck's website has a good review on Acer Gemstone Blue 6920G with the following points:



As expected, the Blu-ray drive is just a Blu-ray reader, not a Blu-ray burner (ability to to burn a Blu-ray media in this sense. Of course, some Blu-ray drives can burn CD/DVD)



For a better Crysis gameplay experience, you will be slightly disappointed (however, this review is done with a Windows Vista base system which is still good):



However, compare that with M1730 gaming rig (two GeForce 8800M GTX SLI):



This post has been edited by eclectice: May 27 2008, 12:14 AM

Montevina platform is from Intel. AMD's new platform is Puma.

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Added on June 10, 2008, 11:07 pmAt this moment, Dell only offer Dell Precision model with Quadro FX.

This post has been edited by eclectice: Jun 10 2008, 11:07 PM

Dell Inspiron will be sufficient.