RabidMammalWax
Solid State Member
- Messages
- 9
Okay, I'm going off to college and I want to buy a reasonably priced notebook to do all sorts of crap. Gaming is one. But I also need it for things like Excel, MS Word, Photoshop--school and multimedia things (because I run a website and so forth). I've been using the PC I'm on now for five years now I think, it's got 512 MB of RAM and it's been brutal--massive slowdown when running MS Word, Firefox, and Photoshop simultaneously (or running JUST Psychonauts, which made me cry for hours--the slowdown, not the game, the game was absurdly awesome...once I played it on an XBOX). I want 2 GB of RAM as a gift from me to me. So anyway, I was looking at Dells because...I don't know, seemed natural enough, and here's where I found a problem:
Inspiron Notebooks vs. XPS Notebooks
I opened two simultaneous tabs, one customizing an Inspiron and one customizing an XPS. Here were their stats:
Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2500 (2GHz/667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Microsoft Office Basic - Includes Word, Excel, and Outlook email
The only difference between the two is that the Inspiron has a 256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 7800 while the XPS has a 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS, which wasn't available on the Inspiron.
With these stats, the prices came down to:
Inspiron: $2,652
XPS: $3,289
That's a difference of almost $600. Can anyone explain for what? Is the XPS more durable, more upgradeable...?
If both are kind of not the way to go, then is there a better brand of notebook PC out there, a better value with a similar set of stats?
Inspiron Notebooks vs. XPS Notebooks
I opened two simultaneous tabs, one customizing an Inspiron and one customizing an XPS. Here were their stats:
Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2500 (2GHz/667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Microsoft Office Basic - Includes Word, Excel, and Outlook email
The only difference between the two is that the Inspiron has a 256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 7800 while the XPS has a 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS, which wasn't available on the Inspiron.
With these stats, the prices came down to:
Inspiron: $2,652
XPS: $3,289
That's a difference of almost $600. Can anyone explain for what? Is the XPS more durable, more upgradeable...?
If both are kind of not the way to go, then is there a better brand of notebook PC out there, a better value with a similar set of stats?