Dell M60

I have been quite happy with the M60...it's replacing my desktop and so far is doing a more than satisfactory job.

Battery life is very close to 4 hours on max battery, estimated--I haven't run the battery down yet, and I usually run it on full speed/brightness when I'm out.

The graphics card runs Age of Mythology at full settings flawlessly, and it looks awesome in widescreen...but I haven't tested any other games yet.

This is the first laptop I've owned, so I don't have much knowledge in comparing the speakers, but I have gotten some nice comments about them, and they sound better than I expected. There isn't much (any) bass, but otherwise they sound good. I'll be getting an external card soon.

The overall build quality is excellent...keyboard is solid, case feels quite solid. My only complaints are 1) when closed, the screen is movable ever so slightly, i.e. you can press down on it and it will give in a bit, but I'm being picky, and 2) the part of the case over the hard drive, where my left hand sits, can get a bit hot at times, but its not unbearable by any means.

The rest of the case doesn't get that hot unless I'm gaming for a while of course...the memory slot door on the bottom gets extremely hot at times but it isn't really noticeable as it rests between your legs if you have it sitting on your lap. Whether this is by design or not, it works.

Fans generally only come on when gaming, and they are quiet, and not even that loud when on full speed. The laptop hasn't even used full speed by itself, I forced the fans on myself with the fan app.

Overall speed is fine for what I've been doing, which is mostly schoolwork/web browsing, but the CPU handles very well. I have never experienced any slow downs like I have on my desktop (1.7 ghz p4) with many apps open. Haven't done any 3d rendering yet, but I'll report on that when I do.

The intel wireless card has worked great where I've been able to get connections, i.e. on my school's campus and such, although I don't have a wireless lan set up myself.

Some screenshots and pics, more to come later, I'm about to head out.

The keyboard layout is similar if not exact to an alienware, which is probably why it looks similar altogether, at least inside...

Let me correct myself on battery life. At 85% on max battery it said i had something like 4:10 remaining? I'll have to do some testing with it to get a real number for you guys. Maybe my number before was from max performance.

Yes I have WinDVD. When I open it, the screen does flash black for a second but it's not changing resolution. The program works perfectly though...

http://talknotebooks.com/showthread.php?t=10877
keyboard is very similar, in my opinion?

I have a 19" CRT if I want to use something bigger but I don't even want to because this screen is so clear...as for portability, its a bit wide, but I think it's pretty easy to carry around. It's not that heavy in my opinion.

The case is definitely some kind of plastic, although the inside is supposed to be some kind of "Tri-Metal chassis" according to the dell web site (I haven't opened it up to see for myself...)

I tested softimage on it, it seemed to work pretty well. Don't have maya. If you want you can always use 1600 res without stretching

Yeah I don't use WinDVD anyway

And no problems with wireless here