Looking for info on this Dell model...Any info appreciated!

Mshellster

I'm looking at buying a relatively inexpensive laptop and was wondering if anyone knew if this particular Dell one was any good http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b&c=ie&cs=iedhs1&kc=HDP&l=en&oc=N0054507&rbc=N0054507&s=dhs&fb=1 ?

The only upgrade I was going to make to the basic model was to add an inbuilt camera and maybe upgrade the battery on it. Just wondering if anyone with good knowledge of computers (cause I have none!) knows if this laptop is any good. I'm looking for something that's not too heavy, has a good enough battery life and is very fast (no nothing about laptop sepecifications so wanted to check if this one would be quite fast?)

Also is there anyway of knowing if this particularly laptop would be noisy cause that's something I really want to avoid if possible!

Alanstrainor

This laptop is not light.
It is not "very" fast.
It does not have a good battery life.

You have to tell us what you want to do with this laptop. As i'm sure our definitions of very fast my vary somewhat. So if you could give us some specifics about how you will be using it, what programs? Where you'll be using it? In the house most of the time? Or will you be lugging it around? etc etc.

Mshellster

Alanstrainor wrote: »

This laptop is not light.
It is not "very" fast.
It does not have a good battery life.

You have to tell us what you want to do with this laptop. As i'm sure our definitions of very fast my vary somewhat. So if you could give us some specifics about how you will be using it, what programs? Where you'll be using it? In the house most of the time? Or will you be lugging it around? etc etc.

Thanks for the reply. Am I'd mostly be using it for doing essay work/research and watching a good bit tv online. I guess I want it to be fast in the sense that it loads video and what not very quickly and I can browse the internet at speed and do research fast. I'd be bringing it different places as I travel around a bit but don't need it to be super light, I thought it the weight of it was under 3kg which didn't seem too bad? Was looking for fairly good battery life (not sure how long the one in this model lasts that's why I was thinking of maybe paying a bit extra to upgrade to the next type?)

Would you recommend a different dell model or some other brand that would be good? I have no real knowledge of computers at all just thought the price seemed good and was my brother was telling me to look for something with 4gb ram to make it faster but the rest of those terms were lost on me!

Mshellster

Would this maybe be better with a 9 cell battery? http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/minicat/services_N00Z1502_promo?c=ie&cs=iedhs1&l=en&s=dhs

TheAmateur

Should have a better battery life anyways with that CPU, but bear in mind those ULV CPUs sacrifice power for extra battery life (there's always a trade-off...) but the 3GB of DDR3 instead of 2GB of DDR2 and the 7200RPM hard drive instead of the 5400RPM should make up for that a bit, but I still think it'll be slower than the other one.

Mshellster

TheAmateur wrote: »

Should have a better battery life anyways with that CPU, but bear in mind those ULV CPUs sacrifice power for extra battery life (there's always a trade-off...) but the 3GB of DDR3 instead of 2GB of DDR2 and the 7200RPM hard drive instead of the 5400RPM should make up for that a bit, but I still think it'll be slower than the other one.

Thanks for the reply. Sorry didn't really understand half of it! (the tech specifications go over my head a bit). Would you recommend the inspiron 13z over the first one?

TheAmateur

Mshellster wrote: »

Would you recommend the inspiron 13z over the first one?

In a life-or-death choice between the two I'd probably pick the first one and upgrade the wireless card to the Intel Wifi link, maybe upgrading the RAM to 3 or 4GB too. That's down to me preferring more power to more battery though.
You should check out pc scout from windows:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pc-scout/
It gets you to answer a bunch of questions and then picks out a laptop for you, and for me anyways, it wasn't too far off. It also explains some of the more confusing jargon which gets bandied about when talking about laptops. It's educational! And only sort-of annoying!

Mshellster

Thanks for that link it actually dumbed down alot of that stuff I wouldn't have known anything about and made sense!