710m or 6000

If you could hold off, wait a couple of weeks for the new I6400.

or maybe the e1205!

My 9 year old son has the 6000 with 128mb x300 and 1GB of ram. BF2 is fairly playable (if only just) with medium settings. I couldn't imaging trying it with the onboard graphics card of the 710. My 8 year old daughter was going to go with the 710 but decided that the 6000 my son has isn't all that heavy, so she'll be going for that. If you have one of the Dell kiosk's in a nearby mall I would go have a look.

wow! wish i had a laptop when i was that age. Who needs GI Joes when they got BF2!!!!!!!

The E1405 will be out before the E1205. The E1205 hasn't even made it to the spec sheets yet. But the E1505 unveiling is next week, and a 15.4" widescreen that will be able to almost get 5hours of battery life (under optimal conditions, of course) is a great laptop for school. Sometimes you don't want to have a screen so small you have to lean in on to see the details.

it all depends on needs

Well if you think 12" is too small and 15.4" is too large, you are definately wanting to go with the E1405. It's 14.1" screen size and should provide a solid 4hours of battery life on the large battery option.

Here's the breakdown of the Pricing/Options/Specs for you:

Chassis
222-1631E1405,CORE SOLO T1300(1.66GHZ)S$859.00
222-1632E1405,CORE DUO T2300(1.66GHZ)S$959.00
222-1633E1405,CORE DUO T2400(1.83GHZ)S$1,159.00
222-1634E1405,CORE DUO T2500(2.00GHZ)S$1,359.00
222-1635E1405,CORE DUO T2600(2.16GHZ)S$1,505.00

Memory
311-5845256MB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$0.00
311-5846512MB,DDR2,533MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$100.00
311-5847512MB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$40.00
311-5848768MB,DDR2,533MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$125.00
311-58491GB,DDR2,533MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$225.00
311-58501GB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$140.00
311-58511.5GB,DDR2,533MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$225.00
311-58522GB,DDR2,533MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$325.00
311-58532GB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$415.00
311-58544GB,DDR2,533MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$1,000.00
311-58551GB,DDR2,667MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$225.00
311-58562GB,DDR2,667MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$325.00
311-58574GB,DDR2,667MHZ,2 DIMM,I640M/E1405V$1,000.00

Battery
312-041180 WHR,9-CELL,LION,PRIM BATT,I640M/E1405V$0.00
312-041253 WHR,6-CELL,LION,PRIM BATT,I640M/E1405V$49.00
312-041380 WHR,9-CELL,LION,ADD BATT,I640M/E1405V$59.00
312-041453 WHR,6-CELL,LION,ADD BATT,I640M/E1405V$99.00

Optical Drive
313-404924X COMBO CD-RW/DVD,I640M/E1405V$0.00
313-40508X DVD+/-RW DRIVE,I640M/E1405V$79.00

Screen
320-469614.1 INCH WXGA,I640M/E1405V$0.00
320-469714.1 INCH TRUELIFE,WXGA+,I640M/E1405V$25.00

Video
320-4698INTEL INTEGRATED GMA950,I640M/E1405V$0.00

Hard Drive
341-320840GB HARD DRIVE,I640M/E1405 (5400RPM)V$0.00
341-320960GB HARD DRIVE,I640M/E1405 (5400RPM)V$49.00
341-321080GB HARD DRIVE,I640M/E1405 (5400RPM)V$79.00
341-3211100GB HARD DRIVE,I640M/E1405 (5400RPM)V$139.00
341-321260GB HARD DRIVE,I640M/E1405 (7200RPM)V$159.00
341-321380GB HARD DRIVE,I640M/E1405 (7200RPM)V$399.00
341-3214100GB HARD DRIVE,I640M/E1405 (7200RPM)V$599.00

Floppy
341-3215EXT USB FLOPPY DRIVE,I640M/E1405V$49.00

Bluetooth
430-1559INT 350 BLUETOOTH WRLESS,I640M/E1405V$49.00

Wireless
430-1560INTEL PRO/WRLS 3945,A/G,DC,I640M/E1405V$25.00
430-1567DELL WRLS 1390,G,SC,I640M/E1405,ROWV$0.00
430-1568DELL WRLS 1490,A/G,DC,I640M/E1405V$15.00

Ethernet
430-1574INTEGRATED NIC AND MODEM,I640M/E1405V$0.00

I believe that come launch time they'll raise the price of the WXGA+ TrueLife upgrade to 50$/75$/100$, but for now that is the price of the upgrade that is heading for the website.

You won't get anything in the way of graphics options (which is just fine for school work) and you'll have plenty of RAM/Hard Drive options to cover you.

Get the 1gig of RAM because the Intel GMA950 graphics can use upto 224megs of RAM on it's own. Beyond that, I'd say get the Battery upgrade, the minimum Core Duo CPU, and 60-80gig 5400rpm HD; you should be good to go.

You'll end up with a price of around 1500$ with tax and shipping but with the majority of the deals that will be out during the launch timeframe of the E1405, you should easily get that price down to 1000$ with coupon codes.

your 8 and 9 year olds have laptops? must be nice.

for the OPer... i wouldnt buy just yet, wait 2 weeks.

either A. prices will drop sig. on the stuff your looking at
B. new models will become availible.

i think A. would be a good reason to wait.

JaxChris:

Thanks for the information. Any indication of if/when there will be dedicated GPU options for the E1505 and which cards will be available? I'm really hoping for something with a higher capability than the MR9600 offered in 8600s (so I can upgrade since I don't want a 17" tank).

Thanks!

There should be, just gotta wait a bit.

They did this with the 6000 also.

kwest, the dedicated graphics model of the E1505 is waiting for ample supply of x1400 GPU's from ATI. ATI is always slow to deliver on their promises.

The x1400 option will be 100$ more and some markets will offer the old 128meg x300 from the I6000D as a 50$ dedicated graphics option.

As for a "guess" at a time frame. I'd say a month. Then they have the E1405 coming out in the 1-2 month time frame.

E1205 and other ultra portables will not be going Yonah until around end of the year. There are no spec sheets or option lists available for those models yet. Same goes for the next 17" XPS. There is talk of Dell making the 20" XPS as a LanBoy type system. It will be a niche market machine and very pricey.

Thanks JaxChris.

I haven't heard that the X1400 is all that great. Doesn't seem like much of an upgrade to go to that from an MR9600. Bummer.

kwest... you prolly won't feel much of a difference between the two cards. It just has updated feature sets and is a true DirectX9.0c card. But the additional memory will be a welcomed boost over the 9600.