Help in deciding Laptop buy quick

I'm not sure how lucky you'll be recieving a laptop in 4 days, or 3 business days via online order. I would consider going to a retail store at this point, though you may pay a little more.. you'll have it in hand. CompUSA,Bestbuy,WalMart,Circuit City etc. I would go to best buy first IMO. If you order a dell and customize..it "could" delay your shipping. They, HP,Compaq,Lenovo,IBM,Toshiba,etc are all very the same at entry level. Bang for buck is sort of a mis-nomer until after 700. You can get for the most part an AMD sempron, Intel Pentium M, Intel core solo or Coreduo 1.6. The duo 1.6ghz will cost more than the others and cause other components to be down graded comparably at the same cost, i.e. less ram, cd-rom only or smaller Hard drive perhaps.. I would go with a Pentium M if possible. The computers you chose seem fine. If you can go up to 800 and still want to order from dell online go here Dell COupons
and check this out too, Laptop deals In store to stay under budget, consider compaq or toshiba, unless you can barter a better deal or hit a good sale. Good Luck

what were their prices? Comparing the two is like a back and forth battle..

Acer 5100 there offers the AMD with 64bit mk-36 2.0ghz proc.. it could be less efficient in battery life than the core duo, but may have more horse power in some applications and the extended benefit of working better with windows vista. I'm not sure what that'll mean, as nearly any entry level laptop that can "run" vista, will do so minimally. The inspiron 6400 has a better drive though, 5400 rpm, which will be noticed, vs the 4200 in the acer. The ram in the acer is also only 533, which will probably hamper the performance of the mk-36. Amd's new DDR2 processors really need the advantage of 667, and 800mhz mem, where as INTEL is just fine with 533. I can only assume, desktop to notebook would produce similar results.

With out both in hand.. I'd say the more balanced system..is your dell.
The acer may have slight advantage of GHZ, 64bit capability in the future, and more ram, but the harddrive speed and 533 ram would almost certainly ruin those benefits some.