Topic Title

It's time to retire my 9 pound 5 yr old Inspiron 9100 for something thinner, lighter, faster. I have 2G ram now and a matte finish 1920 x 1200 screen, and a 3.19 GHz Pentium 4 which runs very hot.

Looking for $800 to $1200 price, maybe more. If I go with Dell Inspiron 15, I still get a matte finish screen but only 1366 x 768 pixels. Processor is only 2.53 GHz, but ram is 4GB and HD is 500 GB at $1515.

On the other hand, the Dell Studio 17 has a 17" screen 1920 x 1200, 2.2 GHz Intel core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, 256 MB video and 320 GB HD for only $1100.

The Gateway P8400 is 1440 x 900, but high gloss screen, as is everything else at BestBuy for about $1200.

Is glossy screen a handicap? Will I miss the 3.19 GHz processsor or is the dual core processor at 1.9 really the same thing?

Hi Dwight,

The Core 2 CPU is so much more efficient than the Pentium 4, that it probably would take 1.5gHz+ to make up the difference. Even the Athlon 64 could give up ~800mHz and still outperform the P4.

RAM is important, and if you are forced to get Vista, then it needs even more. I don't like most glossy screens, though the one on my 24" iMac looks great. I think that using a white background helps reduce the glare off of the surface; whereas black looks like a mirror.

Do you actually use it on the battery?

The battery is used mostly when on a flight to distant clients (usually to Florida from Missouri- so a couple of 2 hour legs w/o plug-in). On that note, I was hoping that a 56 Whr battery on the Gateway could last longer than the 96 Whr battery on my Pentium 4 because so much of its output goes to heat radiating out the bottom. Right now my GPU is reading 131 degF and I'm not even doing anything. CPU is 109 with a recent peak of 132.

The Dell offers a LED screen. Does anyone have experience with that? I'd guess it would be more visible in a bright situation, like trying to use it in a car during daytime (not driving while driving of course- there's too much to do then with phone calls, twitter, GPS, sandwiches and drinks- would be irresponsible to watch a movie on the laptop at the same time).

Wow, www.notebookreview.com says the HP EliteBook 8730w leaves the Dell Studio behind in the dust, performing a benchmark test in 31.6 sec vs 46.8 sec for the Dell, scoring 8672 marks in a system test vs 5982 for the Dell and scoring 14271 marks in a graphics comparison vs 2974 for the Dell while getting nearly 3 1/2 hours of duty from the battery in a typical usage pattern.

Hmm, may go HP this time - and it is a matte finish screen, too.