Are Dell Notebooks any good?

[Soloman02]

Are Dell Notebooks any good?
I can get a really good deal on an inspiron 1150 through the company I work for( it is a small business, 6 ppl including me)

here are the specs:
-Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.80GHz, 14.1-in XGA
-Microsoft® Windows® Home Edition(That is all I need)
-256MB Shared DDR SDRAM, 1 Dimm( I plan on buying a stick from newegg for $40-$50, VS the $100 dell wants to charge me)
-30GB Hard Drive( all I need for a laptop, since I have my desktop for storage)
-24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive( all I need)
-Productivity Pack including WordPerfect®(I have office xp 2003)
-Integrated Network Card/ 56k modem
-65 WHr 8-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

the special price for the business is $979 minus $230 instant savings, and a $100 Mail in rebate making the total $649

I am adding these:

-96 WHr 12-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery [add $39] ( instead of the 65WHr)

-Dell® Wireless 1350 Internal Wireless (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) [add $39 ]

One of my coworkers emailed dell to see if they can give us a better price with the extra items I want.

Mainly this notebook will be used for surfing the web, writing word doc's and maybe some light use of Photoshop. and it will be lugged around.
when I go to college, if I live on campus (depending on where I go) It will be used as my main computer since most dorms do not have enough room for my current desktop and a roommates desktop.

BTW I have been looking for a cheap notebook, as cheap as I can get without getting a refurb or going to a regular celeron( If I did that I would be smacking my head against the desk/wall everytime I used it)

thanks in advance

 

[The Merlin]

Its a good deal, but your battery life is gonna be pretty lousy

 

[Soloman02]

how bad could it be? it is a mobile P4( or does it use so much power that it dosen't make a difference?

 

[The Merlin]

I would say only 2 hours with that, just because it says Mobile P4 doesn't mean the battery life is anywhere near as good as the P-M

 

[YanBooth]

I have a Dell 600M and I am thinking of selling it, and going over to the "dark side" (Quoted from: Me, in september, when having a dispute with an instant message person), and getting a 15" PowerBook, just because they don't give all the problems that laptops, and windows xp seem to have for me, and a good friend who I told NOT to get a Mac, now imagine how hypocritical I am feeling, oh the shame...

Yan

 

[Soloman02]

I could never go over to the "dark side" since I had many bad experiances with the macs at school. besides, I need to have windows so I can A: do some light gaming on the side, use firefox, use Photoshop( don't know if they make it for mac) and be able to move around the O/S right away( something I cant do with a mac)

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

I like my Averatec 3220H series
It gets around 3 hours on teh stock battery
They are 999$ CDN right now, convert to US

AMD Mobile 2000+ (new models are 2200+) 35 watt max btw
IBM \ Hitatchi 40 gig laptop HD
256 meg of ram (new ones are 512 i think) pc2700 btw
Broadcom wireless and VIA wired, as well as some 56k model ive never used
QSI CDRW drive

4 pounds

If you want, ask more questions and i can give you the full 100% specs. This is a great mobile laptop that doesnt get the respect it deserves.

Oh yeah, they come with licensed xp home
12.1 inch screen

 

[mikesgroovin]

one of my laptops is a dell dimension 5100. P4 2.6GHz 512RAM. the crappy part is that the video is only 32MB. The fan is on the underside of the laptop which is a thoughtless design and the battery life is about 2 hours at best with windows. when i run linux the battery life is about 3 hours.

 

[mikesgroovin]

another one of my laptops is a hp/compaq nc8000. Pentium M 1.6 with 512 RAM and a 64MB Mobile ATI. i'm typing from it now and have been on it for about 30minutes (linux) and have 2:43 left. but, i've noticed that when at work and running windows that it's about the same battery life.

 

[Soloman02]

I just don't know if i would like the 12.1 inch screen