Ferrari 4006 vs Dell XPS M170

[skypine27]

I am looking to buy a new laptop in the $2000 price range. I think Ive narrowed it down to two choices, the Dell XPS M170 and the Acer Ferrari 4006

Any thoughts?

I like the fact that Acer is a 15.4" screen instead of the Dells 17". (The Dell might be too big to easily take with me travelling)

I like the fact the Acer is 64Bit and comes with XP Professional x64, and will be ready for Vista.

I like the Dells NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6800 much better than the Acer's X700

When it comes to processors, I have NO idea how the AMD Turion64 ML-40 (2.2GHz) stacks up against the Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)

Any thoughts?

[adinu]

Personally, i like the Acer better because of several things. Its smaller and lighter, better quality than the dell, a slightly more powerful cpu (64bit too) and looks a hell of a lot better.

The only good thing about the dell is the more powerful gpu, but the x700 is no slouch either.

Now its up to u weather all those good things about the acer outweigh the 1 negative in its slightly less powerful gpu

[katorga]

If you are going to travel go with the Acer, there is a huge mobility difference between the 6.5lb acer and the 8lb (10lb with powerbrick) dell. The power brick for the Ferrari/8100 is tiny. There is roughly an extra hour of battery life on the acer. The screen used on the Ferrari is the same used on my 8100, its pretty nice.

If you game, go with the Dell. The 7800GTX is almost 3x faster than the x700. My experience has been the x700 is just barely capable of driving games at normal 1680x1050 screen resolution at acceptable frame rates. Downstepping to a lower resolution looks terrible due to the pixel doubling necessary to accomplish this. The 7800GTX can handle good frame rates even at 1920x1200.

I have acers and dell's, I'd rank their build quality is roughly equal. The Dells I've had through work (C600, D410, C610, M70) have been tanks. They look dull and cheap, but they seem to hold up well. I've never had a hardware problem on any of my 4 Dell laptops. I have had to send my 8100 back for repairs twice due to a faulty power supply issue.

At the end of the day, the greatest shortcoming of my 8100 is the video card. The x700 would be great on a laptop with a 1280x800 native res, but its not enough for 1680x1050. I wish I had a X1600, 6800 or 7800.

[twn_domn]

Build quality regarding these 2 companies are precisely the same. Why? Because most likely, your Dell/Acer/Asus/....etc notebook is OEM by some companies in Taiwan.

Dell vs Acer => Better graphic vs Better mobility