well, this is my first post, so i thought i would start out not with a nag for recomendations, or help with some freak hardware issue, but giving back a small review for a place that helped me (and my mom) choose what is now our new and first laptop.
the brand and model should be pretty obvious by now, so ill skip to the specs
pm 2.13 ghz processor, 1 gig of memory, 80 gig 5.4k rmp hard drive, ati x300 128mb, wsxga screen, 8x dvdrw, intel 2200 w/bluetooth, and xp professional.
we bought a kensington wireless mouse to go with it, cause everyone whos anyone knows that touchpads are really hard to deal with
also, used fatwallet.com coupon code to get 750 off, discover card takes 5%, and fatwallet cashback at 3%, with free ground shipping, makes the total under 1300 
well after sorting through everything and getting the system out of the box, we hooked up the power supply only to find it a bit short. we had been using my dads vaio laptop (never get a sony) since our own vaio desktop had been...well...ill just repeat to never get a sony.
but to go back to the point, the vaios power cord was a bit longer, and this dell one bearly made it past the plug in behind the couch to our coffee table (set up that way for convenience)
after going through all the normal stuff, and unistalling most of the yunk, it was time to test out the wifi connection. were running straight off a qwest modem with its own wireless gateway, and the connection is pretty good. i havent tested range, but our house isnt a 10,000 sq ft palace, so thats not a huge issue.
i trasfered all of my photos and music over, and am really sad that dell doest ship adobe photoshop elements like they did on my dads dell desktop and our vaio desktop
. also, i had special ordered musicmatch jukebox plus so i could have full access to all the features in it, espicaly the mp3 cd burner. unforunatly, musicmatch seems to experience a runtime error and wont burn to an mp3 cd, but will burn a normal audio cd. ive emailed dell about it, and well they are sending out a cd with musicmatch on it, so there shouldnt be any worries.
i dont play any games that are as graphic intense as the games most of you play, and this x300 card is a huge step from the 4 year old nvidia geforce2 mx with 32 mb of vram
i did install the omega ati drivers though. the most graphic intense game i play would be sims 2 university, and i currently dont have the cd to install that with me, but i have installed command & conquer renegade, which has a few random glitches that really bug me. i cant run it with ati tray tools open and the card overclocked, and when i have it running the sound and picture usally jerk around, usally ending up with me getting shot. not so much of a problem in multiplayer, but there seems to be some new problem with that now, and im not sure if its just software, or if westwood servers are having problems. whatever it is it makes me 
i did benchmark the card, both with and without the omega drivers, and both quality and performance drivers too
standard drivers
3dmark05 = 928
forget what 3dmark03 was, but about 1300
omega quality drivers
3dmark05 = 608
overclocked = 708
yet again, forget what 3dmark03 was (not even sure if i ran that with those haha)
omega performance drivers
3dmark05 = 1394
overclocked = 1500?
maybe i should just delete the 3dmark03 scores now, and none of you will ever know of how forgetful i am with numbers in the 10k range...
xp professional is a huge step up from stupid me
and pcstats.com really helped me clean up some things.
for battery life, i was playing renegade online for about an 1:30 before i alt tabed to the desktop to see that i hate 10 minutes of battery life yet, which is when i rushed it over to a power supply
also, the speakers on this notebook are pretty nice, considering how bad the ones on my dads laptop were 
there is the occasion when you end up covering them with your arms, but most of the time i have my arms pretty up above them, and i usally have my philips headphones in (which i switch around to my mp3 cdplayer)
overall, this is a good computer. if your looking for something that can play a few games, good for multimedia, or just the ultimate productivity machine, then here it is.
side note (way off topic)
my half brother is a huge pc freak, and has several laptops and plays some pretty nice games. i heard he wanted an alienware laptop, and he said his dream one cost him enough to send his son off to collage for 4 years
so i looked at the ultimate alienware alturnative: sager. i think i might be able to convince him to only spend about 2.3k for the 5720 instead of w/e it was for the alienware
the brand and model should be pretty obvious by now, so ill skip to the specs
pm 2.13 ghz processor, 1 gig of memory, 80 gig 5.4k rmp hard drive, ati x300 128mb, wsxga screen, 8x dvdrw, intel 2200 w/bluetooth, and xp professional.
we bought a kensington wireless mouse to go with it, cause everyone whos anyone knows that touchpads are really hard to deal with
also, used fatwallet.com coupon code to get 750 off, discover card takes 5%, and fatwallet cashback at 3%, with free ground shipping, makes the total under 1300 well after sorting through everything and getting the system out of the box, we hooked up the power supply only to find it a bit short. we had been using my dads vaio laptop (never get a sony) since our own vaio desktop had been...well...ill just repeat to never get a sony.
but to go back to the point, the vaios power cord was a bit longer, and this dell one bearly made it past the plug in behind the couch to our coffee table (set up that way for convenience)after going through all the normal stuff, and unistalling most of the yunk, it was time to test out the wifi connection. were running straight off a qwest modem with its own wireless gateway, and the connection is pretty good. i havent tested range, but our house isnt a 10,000 sq ft palace, so thats not a huge issue.
i trasfered all of my photos and music over, and am really sad that dell doest ship adobe photoshop elements like they did on my dads dell desktop and our vaio desktop
. also, i had special ordered musicmatch jukebox plus so i could have full access to all the features in it, espicaly the mp3 cd burner. unforunatly, musicmatch seems to experience a runtime error and wont burn to an mp3 cd, but will burn a normal audio cd. ive emailed dell about it, and well they are sending out a cd with musicmatch on it, so there shouldnt be any worries.i dont play any games that are as graphic intense as the games most of you play, and this x300 card is a huge step from the 4 year old nvidia geforce2 mx with 32 mb of vram
i did install the omega ati drivers though. the most graphic intense game i play would be sims 2 university, and i currently dont have the cd to install that with me, but i have installed command & conquer renegade, which has a few random glitches that really bug me. i cant run it with ati tray tools open and the card overclocked, and when i have it running the sound and picture usally jerk around, usally ending up with me getting shot. not so much of a problem in multiplayer, but there seems to be some new problem with that now, and im not sure if its just software, or if westwood servers are having problems. whatever it is it makes me i did benchmark the card, both with and without the omega drivers, and both quality and performance drivers too
standard drivers
3dmark05 = 928
forget what 3dmark03 was, but about 1300
omega quality drivers
3dmark05 = 608
overclocked = 708
yet again, forget what 3dmark03 was (not even sure if i ran that with those haha)
omega performance drivers
3dmark05 = 1394
overclocked = 1500?
maybe i should just delete the 3dmark03 scores now, and none of you will ever know of how forgetful i am with numbers in the 10k range...
xp professional is a huge step up from stupid me
and pcstats.com really helped me clean up some things.for battery life, i was playing renegade online for about an 1:30 before i alt tabed to the desktop to see that i hate 10 minutes of battery life yet, which is when i rushed it over to a power supply
also, the speakers on this notebook are pretty nice, considering how bad the ones on my dads laptop were there is the occasion when you end up covering them with your arms, but most of the time i have my arms pretty up above them, and i usally have my philips headphones in (which i switch around to my mp3 cdplayer)overall, this is a good computer. if your looking for something that can play a few games, good for multimedia, or just the ultimate productivity machine, then here it is.
side note (way off topic)
my half brother is a huge pc freak, and has several laptops and plays some pretty nice games. i heard he wanted an alienware laptop, and he said his dream one cost him enough to send his son off to collage for 4 years
so i looked at the ultimate alienware alturnative: sager. i think i might be able to convince him to only spend about 2.3k for the 5720 instead of w/e it was for the alienware 
