[Mike B.]

Two parts

Part 1 - I've been considering picking up a new laptop for basic browsing, e-mailing, being lazy in front of the HD tv instead of going upstairs to the desktop. No CAD work on this one other than the Solidworks viewer utility, occasional travel use for photo dumps and other small tasks. My last laptop had a 15.4" widescreen and 12 cell battery so it weighed a ton and I never wanted to take in anywhere.

Thoughts, advice, other? Would like to keep it under $600 and without a Celeron if possible. What sort of spec should I be looking for.

The second part to this is that I scored a Dell M1330 in the American Express Wishlist contest ($1999 MSRP, I paid $900). I have a feeling it is way more laptop than I need and selling it on ebay would possibly net a big enough gain to buy the more suitable laptop. Is it worth the whole sell/buy thing, seems the stated MSRP might be off a bit to the high side? Obviously the 1330 would get the job done and then some but is it overkill even 3-4 years down the road for what I want to do.

I used to stay up on all things computer (drives, graphics cards, processors, etc) but I just don't have that kind of time anymore. Help!

Dell spec: http://assets.amexnetwork.com/wishlist/common/pdf/dell_laptop.pdf

 

[DHS]

**** that. keep the kickass laptop. you just know you're going to use it for more then you think.

sell some bike stuff to make up the difference.

 

[SK6]

Most important thing I have learned about notebooks, was to make sure the notebook has a separate video processor, as opposed to the " Integrated Intel" video. it eats um much of the ram you have, and is very limiting in certain applications.

 

[binary visions]

I'd probably keep the badass notebook you have. You got a great price on it, and if you spend $600 on a notebook, it's going to be significantly heavier and bulkier, and won't perform as well. You won't get a notebook of that size and weight for $600. Plus, you may use it for more than you think if you actually have a good notebook that performs well.

If you need the money, though, I'm sure you could fetch a pretty good price on eBay and pick up something like a Dell Vostro notebook for $600 that would perform pretty well.

 

[syadasti]

You could buy an Asus EEE ultraportable SSD notebook plus a 2GB DIMM and install XP on it if ultraportable cheap celeron laptop is your goal.

 

[Mike B.]

Thanks for the feedback all. I'll probably end up keeping the Dell. I was checking out an Acer Extensa for $550 at evil Best Buy yesterday but figure for the extra $$ I get a better screen, lighter weight, better processor, etc. Should be able to get several good years out of it. The one thing that scares me with the Dell now is that it comes with Vista.

Syadasti - was looking at the Eee review at Anandtech as something for my parents to use when traveling. Too small for my blind eyes but a cool little pc.

 

[DHS]

vista is, really is that bad.
www.newegg.com spend a extra 120 or so and get XP pro.

sure, i have a desktop gaming computer. but i love to use all 8gigs of my ram. and i know all the games i'm playing WILL work. as will all the other programs.

 

[binary visions]

vista is, really is that bad.

No, it's not.

 

[syadasti]

vista is, really is that bad.
www.newegg.com spend a extra 120 or so and get XP pro.

sure, i have a desktop gaming computer. but i love to use all 8gigs of my ram. and i know all the games i'm playing WILL work. as will all the other programs.

Well you better have XP64 if you want to use all 8GB of your ram

 

[Mike B.]

Was checking Newegg for XP yesterday and also considering a dual boot with Ubuntu and Vista.

 

[syadasti]

Was checking Newegg for XP yesterday and also considering a dual boot with Ubuntu and Vista.

Best plan is to buy an OEM Vista Business or Ultimate with your PC within 90 days of purchase - that gives you downgrade rights to XP Pro and you can upgrade back to Vista after service packs have it working well enough to justify switching.

It probably will be about the same as an upgrade from Home to Pro (or Business if its Vista) with the purchase of a system. Only disadvantage of OEM is that its not transferable to another PC.

 

[DHS]

Well you better have XP64 if you want to use all 8GB of your ram

of course.

sorry to derail, but now i'm finding out that the 700watt power supply i had to purchase to get this machine to work. isn't enough. sigh

 

[syadasti]

of course.

sorry to derail, but now i'm finding out that the 700watt power supply i had to purchase to get this machine to work. isn't enough. sigh

Better to look at actual reviews of PSU rather than claimed.

Its more likely its just a bad PSU - you'd have to be running some pretty serious equipment to really need a 700 watt PSU - if you actually measure the draw from a high-end system it usually isn't anywhere near the claimed or recommended PSU range they are just covering their asses with a margin for cheap PSUs.

 

[DHS]

Better to look at actual reviews of PSU rather than claimed.

Its more likely its just a bad PSU - you'd have to be running some pretty serious equipment to really need a 700 watt PSU - if you actually measure the draw from a high-end system it usually isn't anywhere near the claimed or recommended PSU range they are just covering their asses with a margin for cheap PSUs.

well actually i know its not the psu. if i ever decide to add another harddrive, i'm right at the limit. i should have atleast a 900watt one..
amd 6400+ am2
8gigs of DDR2 800mhz
3 hard drives SATA
2 dvdrw drives, only because XP64 can't read my old plextor drive
2 8800GTX cards, dual sli

and a bunch of stupid blue LED lights. why is it that gamer parts always have stupid glowing lights

 

[syadasti]

I still doubt you really need that. We have a huge dell quadcore server we just got with 8phase power, dual socket server motherboard, dual PSU, dual NIC w/offloading, tons of fans, 4 HDD RAID 5 (along with the RAID controller), a DVD/CDRW combo drive and it probably draws about 400 watts at full load.

LED use very little power.

If you look closely at nVidia's spec sheets their PSU rating includes the cpu, memory, two HDDs, optical, and other components and a single 8800GTX all needing 28A on the 12V rail. If you are adding 1 more 8800GTX, a DVDRW and a HDD and optical you probably wouldn't even max out good performing 600W Seasonic PSU (they do 50A on the 12V).

I could see how you want a 700W PSU so you'd have a bigger margin for overclocking CPU and/or GPU and not having your PSU fan going full bore all the time if your room is hot.

Now all my figures are if the PSU is true to claim output and has a decent 12V rail - a lot aren't so I can see people getting 750 or higher if they aren't sure the PSU is decent.

 

[DHS]

hm, thanks i'll look into it further.

i know LEDs don't use much, i was just stating how freaking annoying they are.
this is my psu, http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817341002

 

[syadasti]

Yeah that looks good to me - should be plenty with a nice margin for safety/overclocking/whatever.

As far as approx. draw on 12V:
HDD - 3A at boot spinup 1A while actually using
Fans - .5A

I forget what DVDRW use on average.

One thing to keep in mind is you can't simply add up the maximum load a component can draw as you'll never have a scenario when everything is at max draw. All 4 of your DIMMs won't be accessed at the same time, you probably wouldn't burn 2 DVDs at the same time, etc... Load also varies on application you are running - ie when you burning DVDs your GTXs are probably in desktop mode.

 

[DHS]

well actually i know my system would not work with a 500watt. because thats what i originally had. now binary has my old ram and cpu

once i gave it more power. everything works. just if i over use everything at once. just one of my extra harddrives gets read failures. but i should just get a new drive.

any recommendations? sata is what i've been using

 

[syadasti]

well actually i know my system would not work with a 500watt. because thats what i originally had. now binary has my old ram and cpu

Yeah well a X6800 Quad core 8800SLI system uses about 520 actual measured watts at load, so that makes sense. Your PSU should be fine even if you are overclocking both CPU and GPU in the summertime.

just one of my extra harddrives gets read failures. but i should just get a new drive.

any recommendations? sata is what i've been using

Is the HDD under warranty? Have you tried using a different power cord off your PSU? I would check out storage review to find out what the latest and greatest is - I like Seagate but I don't think they are at the top of the leaderboard right now (they do have the 5 year warranty though). I recently got a Maxtor (Seagate 7200.10 rebadge) 320GB HDD for $50 from frys.com.

 

[Mike B.]

Quick question - how do I go about getting one of the monster PSUs into a laptop? :biggrin:

 

[binary visions]

Quick question - how do I go about getting one of the monster PSUs into a laptop? :biggrin:

A welding torch and a big hammer.

 

[DHS]

Quick question - how do I go about getting one of the monster PSUs into a laptop? :biggrin:

which version of the Dell M1330 did you get?
is it the one with the solid state HDD?

even if you have the "cheap" model, you could also get this chip after market and pop it in, maybe, Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)

i've done it with amd laptops

 

[Mike B.]

It has the regular 160gb drive (7200rpm, SATA) and the T7250. The only big upgrade included was the LED LCD.

 

[syadasti]

It has the regular 160gb drive (7200rpm, SATA) and the T7250. The only big upgrade included was the LED LCD.

They cheaped out an gave you the integrated X3100 video

 

[Mike B.]

It's supposed to have the 128mb GeForce 8400M. Still probably a week from shipping so we'll see what it comes with.

 

[binary visions]

It's supposed to have the 128mb GeForce 8400M. Still probably a week from shipping so we'll see what it comes with.

I'll trade you my old Thinkpad for it. The Thinkpad will be perfect for what you want to use it for, and the XPS will be perfect for everything else

 

[Mike B.]

I'll trade you my old Thinkpad for it. The Thinkpad will be perfect for what you want to use it for, and the XPS will be perfect for everything else

Throw in some RM credits and we can call it even.

Unrelated - was in Sam's Club last night and was surprised to see them selling Lenovo and Dell lappies.

 

[binary visions]

FYI, Dell is having a sale right now on the loaded M1330 for $1399 shipped & you get a free $200 gift card with it. Just to give you perspective on what the machine is really worth vs. what the MSRP is.

 

[blue]

I hate the LED crap that computers come with. I ripped all of mine out when I built my amchine recently.

 

[Mike B.]

FYI, Dell is having a sale right now on the loaded M1330 for $1399 shipped & you get a free $200 gift card with it. Just to give you perspective on what the machine is really worth vs. what the MSRP is.

Well the laptop just arrived, still not sure what to do with it. I checked the spec versus current list price and Dell has it for $1849 with $100 instant savings so $1749. Based on comparable setups at ebay (and recently closed auctions) it looks like $1500 is possible. Most sellers include shipping so it appears I could net about $400 at most after all the fees.

Guess I'll think on it for another day.