Replacing my I8600 - need advice

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My barely used 8600 was stolen when my house was robbed last month. I bought
it from the outlet and loved it. For 1500.00 I got the 128 meg video card, a
4x DVD burner, wireless card, auto air adapter, 40 gig hard drive and snap on
cover. The CPU and screen were base models. It came with 256 meg of ram, which
I upgraded the day I got it to a gig.

Now my budget is 2500 or so and I can't decide which way to go. I know I want
the 7200 rpm hard drive, the 128 meg video card, maybe the top end screen and
the 8x burner. I'm not sure if I should go with the 8600, the 9100 or the XPS.


I plan to use it as a general duty laptop - work, games, movies when I return
to sea duty aboard the USS Nimitz. On past deployments I had a 3800 which
worked flawlessly. Any suggestions?
Thanks....................................................................
...........DUG

 

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The organic entity known as VintageDUG67 communicated the following:

> My barely used 8600 was stolen when my house was robbed last month. I
> bought it from the outlet and loved it. For 1500.00 I got the 128 meg
> video card, a 4x DVD burner, wireless card, auto air adapter, 40 gig
> hard drive and snap on cover. The CPU and screen were base models. It
> came with 256 meg of ram, which I upgraded the day I got it to a gig.
>
> Now my budget is 2500 or so and I can't decide which way to go. I
> know I want the 7200 rpm hard drive, the 128 meg video card, maybe the
> top end screen and the 8x burner. I'm not sure if I should go with
> the 8600, the 9100 or the XPS.
>
>
> I plan to use it as a general duty laptop - work, games, movies when I
> return to sea duty aboard the USS Nimitz. On past deployments I had a
> 3800 which worked flawlessly. Any suggestions?

Unless you have it plugged in at all times, you better stay clear of the
9100 and I guess the same is true for the XPS. And I don't think my
friend's 9100 performs so much better than my 8600 (I generally beat him
at Wolfenstein). Ofcourse he *does* get more muscles lugging it around

I love the WUXGA screen and would certainly recommend that. 1 GB of main
memory is no luxury either.

You automatically get the improved Pentium M core, but I wouldn't pick
the fastest. Generally speaking it is better to invest in extra memory
than in a little more processing speed. Ofcourse with gaming a faster
processor might give you just that little edge ... and then you might
consider the 9100/XPS after all.

Still not enough to fill the $2500 budget, but these laptops are just too
cheap nowadays!

Finally for gaming I would recommend the Logitech MX510 mouse.

Hans

 

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Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Thanks for the input. After three days of trying hundreds of combinations, I
think I'm gonna get another 8600, just a little more beefed up. And a better
warranty.....................................DUG

 

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Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Go for the 7200 hard drive. You'll see a nice performance gain.
"VintageDUG67" <vintagedug67@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040629222046.19313.00000878@mb-m04.aol.com...
> Thanks for the input. After three days of trying hundreds of combinations,
I
> think I'm gonna get another 8600, just a little more beefed up. And a
better
> warranty.....................................DUG