8600 arrival

My new 8600 laptop is due in about 30 minutes on ups truck, can hardly wait, will follow up on this thread with my impressions and benchmarks :

OK,its arrived ,due to the weather here they were about 2 hours late delivering,
opened the box ....WOW she's lovely, sleek and smooth, keys are silky smooth.
screen is a perfect size, and the picture awesome!!!!Heat what heat? ran all day small amount of heat on the left side at the processor but nothing excessive, hardly noticeable
spent the first hour just staring at her, second hour updating the windows xp updates, removed antivirus and installed system suite 5.0 a great virus and firewall program, removed AOL, Earthlink don"t need them, tested all the hardware no problems,boot time is super fast , heard many stories about DVD playback in WINDVD lines across the screen, tested sure enough you could see the streaks, tried windows media player with same movie no problems, so the problem is not with the display but the WINDVD software....
overall impressions of system Blazzing fast , touch pad responsive with the lightest of touch, no problems with the keys at all, Looks beautiful........ordered a Dell nylon case really good quality and super tough straps and hooks, laptop fits perfect very good padding excellent workmanship....weight with laptop and all hardware is surprisingly light..battery charge is less than an hour will test battery life but had over 4 hours straight from the box according to the built in meter, software was all neatly packaged and labelled if needed for any reinstalls.. Installed Aquamark , and 3DMARK03...
AQUAMARK default settings 12,712 [note with updated drivers score jumped to 17.450]
3DMARK03 default settings 2,496 [with new drivers about 2,600]
Also installed HALO settings high 1024x768 no slowdowns at all runs smooth
Serious Sam 2nd encounter 1280x1024 32 bit color Direct3D smooth as silk no slowdowns at all.......onboard sound is pretty good, and the built in speakers are crisp and great volume.....
Final verdict this machine is a dream and the display is the best I have ever seen I would recomend it to anyone looking for a laptop.... SPECS 1.7GHZ
128NVIDIA 5650FX GO
512MB 333MHZ DDR RAM
4XDVD+RW NEC WRITER
60GIG ATI ULTRA HD[ I have the 5400 just imagine what the 7200 would do}
WSXGA+ DISPLAY {note windvd with this display will have lines within the picture
during dvd play just use media player or another dvd program and you will have no problems]note just checked at dell website driver update for video supposed to address dvdlines will reinstall wndvd and see. [update drivers installed windvd problem was eliminated no lines.]

I would keep an eye out on the dell website ordered mine on the last day of the upgrade special, price jumped a little bit about $100 on same setup , I know that new notebooks should be out soon and week to week dell offers different packages
all i can say is when you see the deal you want go for it, I kept waiting but said hey,lets do it and I am now very happy and remember they have a 30 day return policy so if several days after you order a better deal comes along you can always cancell and reorder or return it and reorder up to you.... rumor also says 9600ati cards may be in the future can't tell for sure but am quite pleased with my 128nvidia
5650fxgo......[ pretty much garrantee after christmas there will be some good deals}its a roll of the dice any way you look at it.....

I will take your word for it since this is my first laptop, but It feels great to me,
anyway as far as the heat issue I had it at the office and they played for nearly 3 hours on Blackhawk Down and the laptop was hardly warm enough to notice at all.....Maybe one day I will own a Sager and will feel the difference but right now all is right in the world......