Anyone need a new Dell laptop?

[gbearbuck]

I'm thinking I will not do any of the wireless stuff (I can just plug it into the cable motum and be fine)...

They offer a 768 choice for memory (not much more than the 512... there is a big jump to the 1 gb)... will 768 do, or would it be better to just do the 512?

I'm not a video game player, so that stuff doesn't really matter. I will be using this for access to the internet, email, digital photo stuff, and regular software (word, excel, quickbooks, etc)... games for traveling will be loaded but not used too often.

C-dog,

What would you suggest for this... maybe I'm already overkill on the quality of computer I'm putting together... what do I really need?

 

[BuckeyeInTheBoro]

Thanks, I also asked around the office and to a person everybody said to go with the Pentium M because it allows for a longer battery life.

What speed chip should one be looking at? Are there min. levels for certain programs?

Also I don't have wireless at home, is this something I should consider? And what products do you suggest for it?

If I do pull the trigger, I def. want to use this for digital photo's (log in digital pictures from the digital camera)... I am buying my wife a digital camera for X-mas, so I will need this stuff anyway... what suggestions do you all have...??

Also, what how big of a hard drive would one need? I would thingk 60GB would be enough... any thoughts...?

Oh, and memory... 512 enough or 1GB (a lot more $$ though)...??

As most of you know, I'm clueless when it comes to this stuff... I have some friends that are in the biz, and they advise me when it is time for this stuff... unfortunately they cannot be reached at this time...

Please help... Thanks...

I went with the 1.6GB Pentium M with 512M RAM, but I changed it from 512 on two DIMMs to 512 on one DIMM. That way I only need to buy another 512 if I ever decided to upgrade to 1G.

Yes on the wireless. Get whatever for this laptop and buy a Linksys router later (their customer service has been fantastic).

I took the 30G drive, but digital pics do take up a lot of room if you never burn them to CD and purge them from the laptop's HD... you might want more.

 

[BuckeyeNation27]

I went through the upgrades and got mine up to 1508, then entered the coupon...which jumped the laptop price to 1670....do the free memory upgrade offers not work with coupons?

also, does this work if part of the 1500+ is a digital camera? or does the 1500+ have to be all on the computer?

 

[Clarity]

Honestly, I think you'll be perfectly fine with 512 (with the caveat that it should be a single chip). If a few years down the road you aren't, you can always upgrade then.

On the Pentium M, my general rule of thumb is to always get the middle processor available. There's usually a pretty sharp markup on the highest to get a little more juice out of the "power buyers" that just take the top of everything, and there generally isn't too great a price saving to go with the lowest. So if your options are something like 1.5, 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0. I'd probably go with one of the middle options.

I'm thinking I will not do any of the wireless stuff (I can just plug it into the cable motum and be fine)...

They offer a 768 choice for memory (not much more than the 512... there is a big jump to the 1 gb)... will 768 do, or would it be better to just do the 512?

I'm not a video game player, so that stuff doesn't really matter. I will be using this for access to the internet, email, digital photo stuff, and regular software (word, excel, quickbooks, etc)... games for traveling will be loaded but not used too often.

C-dog,

What would you suggest for this... maybe I'm already overkill on the quality of computer I'm putting together... what do I really need?

 

[BuckeyeInTheBoro]

I went through the upgrades and got mine up to 1508, then entered the coupon...which jumped the laptop price to 1670....do the free memory upgrade offers not work with coupons?

also, does this work if part of the 1500+ is a digital camera? or does the 1500+ have to be all on the computer?

There was an automatic 15% off being applied when you built the laptop.. that goes away to use the $750.

No, the laptop needs to be over $1500 by itself, but use one of these for your camera:
http://www.slickdeals.net/#p5337

 

[NJ-Buckeye]

it's the old scenario... If I just had this a couple weeks ago...

suggestions:
Chip: P4 over PM (but the previous comments are all correct about why PM)
Memory: 512M minimum
Hard drive: 60GB
CD/DVD: highly suggest you get the combo CD/DVD WRITE... so you can burn either...

now the game changes if you plan on doing anything beyond Microsoft Office.. if you plan on using the big guns (PhotoShop, Illustrator or the movie stuff) you're going to need horsepower...and storage... big time...

Chip: P4 for sure
Memory: at least 1GB (by the way, go with the largest single chips that make financial sense to you, more later)
Hard drive: largest hard drive that makes sense... (you will be amazed how hoggy these files get... you get bit map versions of still photos or projects, or anything video, and you'll eat a hard drive very quickly).. consider buying an addl external drive... like an Iomega 250 GB for like $200 on pricegrabber.com serves two purposes.. very easy backups... and audio-video file storage... if your PC crashes, external drive is unaffected... so you're still gold...

You have to always ensure you have 20% hard drive freespace since your machine will need it for swapping... at 10% you could lock it up...

addl notes:
P4 is faster... PM as been sited is for most efficient performance for a laptop... but not necessarily most effective for anything beyond word, excel and email... certainly not audio-visual.. XP in itself is a memory hog, and if you use AOL, you're gonna consume a lot of the basic memory...

Memory chips... usually there's only 3 or 4 memory slots... and most of the time memory has to be in pairs... i.e. 512M is two 256M chips... so buying biggest chips that make sense is better... to permit growth later...

Was told by a guru that most wireless is pretty generic under the cover... personal experience with NetGear and LinkSys has been flawless... and for anyone that doesn't have the wireless setup... it is so sweet... if you have a laptop, it doesn't make sense NOT to have a wireless setup... I just got my hardware from buy.com ... have laptop build with wireless already included...

Consider the A960 printer... since it works pretty nice for a true all-purpose printer... standalone copier... standalone fax... rather than a model that has to go thru the PC.. when you just want one copy, you don't want to login and launch software, etc... you just want to press a button...

And lastly, consider the largest screen size that makes financial sense... you'd be very surprised how nice the 15" vs 14" is... and since you can use this to watch DVD movies, you'll be happier

oh.. and after reading Clarity's post... he is absolutely correct, in that the top most option of each item carries a real premium... and should only be selected if you know you're going to need it... value equation comes into play thereafter...

 

[gbearbuck]

What is a USB memory key?

 

[BuckeyeInTheBoro]

What is a USB memory key?

A little stick of memory (usually on some type of keychain) that fits into your USB port and then works as a removable hard drive. Think of it as a "super" floppy disk. I use my 128MG on a regular basis to swap files between home and work or take files with me to a client, etc.

 

[Clarity]

A little stick of memory (usually on some type of keychain) that fits into your USB port and then works as a removable hard drive. Think of it as a "super" floppy disk. I use my 128MG on a regular basis to swap files between home and work or take files with me to a client, etc.

You know, I can't begin to imagine how difficult it is to keep secure systems locked down anymore. I can only imagine that DoD computers in SCIFs don't have USB ports, wireless networking, or any of the other modern conveniences that could pose a problem.

 

[NJ-Buckeye]

and as far as buying camera with system... I did... but wouldn't ... now that I see what you can get (top rated stuff) on pricegrabber.com... for less than I paid on Dell.... and mine was a package discount!?! ...

it's the value equation again... but you've seen a number of digital pictures on BP... and you can see a definite difference... one fella, can't remember who it was... posted pictures that were professional quality shots... you get what you pay for...

 

[BrutuStrength]

You know, I can't begin to imagine how difficult it is to keep secure systems locked down anymore. I can only imagine that DoD computers in SCIFs don't have USB ports, wireless networking, or any of the other modern conveniences that could pose a problem.

A good network admin team can set profiles that disable USB ports and the like. I was a contractor for the headquarters of a large bank chain, and most of their users did not have local admin rights, all the way up through VP level. A significant number of their management team used PDAs, and were not able to use the devices via their USB ports. They had to submit paperwork signed by their bosses to get that access.

FWIW, the system security of banks is probably greater than that of the governmental agencies you referenced. The military project that I worked on allowed individual users to have much more freedom/control of their PCs then the banks where I've worked. Both types of organizations do have excellent firewall systems.

The physical security, however, is far more imposing at the Army sites. 2 guards holding M16s are far more imposing than overweight security guards sitting behind bulletproof glass while drinking coffee.

 

[Clarity]

SCIFs are a special creature. Once you pass through the outer gates, you pretty much take whatever's thrown at you. At Goodfellow AFB in Texas, where the finer points of military cryptoanalysis is taught, that sometimes means that the Air Force SPs take some free shots at Marines if some sort of alarm goes off. Lol, no idea why I'm off on this tangent, except there's this bastard with red hair who I still owe for just such an incident. But anyway, yes, DoD and DoS security as a whole is sometimes lax compared to civilian counterparts, particularly financial institutions, but get into the special compartmentalized information facilities, and it's a whole new world. A couple guys I served with now do communication security inspections at embassies around the world for the DoS, I should ask them how it's all handled. These days in particular, it's all taken pretty seriously.

If you're ever on a base, and see a very sturdy looking single-floor windowless building inside a serious looking fence, which in of itself is inside a serious looking fence, and there's a curious amount of personnel and weapondry within the perimeter, that's probably a SCIF.

A good network admin team can set profiles that disable USB ports and the like. I was a contractor for the headquarters of a large bank chain, and most of their users did not have local admin rights, all the way up through VP level. A significant number of their management team used PDAs, and were not able to use the devices via their USB ports. They had to submit paperwork signed by their bosses to get that access.

FWIW, the system security of banks is probably greater than that of the governmental agencies you referenced. The military project that I worked on allowed individual users to have much more freedom/control of their PCs then the banks where I've worked. Both types of organizations do have excellent firewall systems.

The physical security, however, is far more imposing at the Army sites. 2 guards holding M16s are far more imposing than overweight security guards sitting behind bulletproof glass while drinking coffee.

 

[gbearbuck]

Well reading BP just cost me a few pennies... thanks for the heads up, I just purchased my first labtop.

I didn't go overboard with the unit... got one with a Pentium 4 processor (518 w/HT Technology...2.80GHz, 533MHz FSB), with a 15 inch SXGA+ LCD panel, and 512MB, 333MHz, 1 Dimm... 60GB, a 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+RW/+R)...

I took C-dog's advice and will go with different wireless (not Dell's)...

Thanks for the heads up, hope I enjoy my new toy (now I need to go travel to put it to good use... that was the selling point with the boss... Mrs. Gbear)...

 

[Clarity]

Well reading BP just cost me a few pennies... thanks for the heads up, I just purchased my first labtop.

I didn't go overboard with the unit... got one with a Pentium 4 processor (518 w/HT Technology...2.80GHz, 533MHz FSB), with a 15 inch SXGA+ LCD panel, and 512MB, 333MHz, 1 Dimm... 60GB, a 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+RW/+R)...

I took C-dog's advice and will go with different wireless (not Dell's)...

Thanks for the heads up, hope I enjoy my new toy (now I need to go travel to put it to good use... that was the selling point with the boss... Mrs. Gbear)...

Congrats on the buy. Now here's the next step -- as far as I'm concerned, the first thing you basically have to do with a new system from a vendor like Dell, is strip off all the crap they put in there. Right after firing it up the first time, I'd go into the Add/Remove Program area, and uninstall anything you don't know you want. That's something people around here (myself included) can certainly try and help with. Then hit up the "your pc, you should have control of it" thread, and download ad-aware and spybot s&d. Run those, and further clean the garbage preloaded on your system. From there, I'd make sure you have a copy of Norton Antivirus 2005 (can purchase that from symantec.com). I recommend *against* Norton Internet Security, as much of this suite is now overlapped by built-in Windows features with SP2. You get 12 months of virus updates with the 49.95 purchase, and combined with the security tweaks in the "your PC" thread, can virtually guarantee that you're not going to get infected with much of anything.

Finally, if you're doing the wireless, and go with the Netgear items I mentioned (right now, 108Mbps is basically the fastest wireless option), then it would be best if you used WPA-TSK security. WEP is 'normal', but not quite as secure. Many would suggest that it's enough. I guess my point is, if you can do more, then more is better. It will require a couple easy software upgrades, and some minor configuation tweaks -- but when USAA finally cuts my claim check, I'll be replacing all of that stuff myself, and I'll make a point to keep track of what I did to set it all up step by step. Little things like not broadcasting your SSID (I think that's what it's called), and using an appropriate passkey/password make a big difference.

At the end of the day, I think you're going to be very happy with your new laptop. Appreciate that everything I'm throwing out is just recommendation and/or opinion which is a product of my own experiences. I'm no expert by any means, and as I said, there are folks around here with real education and/or experience relevant to the issue, and can be better sources of info. But I'm more than happy to do what I can to help get you started properly.

 

[gbearbuck]

Actually I hope this all works out... got a hold of one of my buddies and he said he bought a couple as well (one for him, one for his wife, and two to resell on Ebay).... he said that the $750 coupon was actually for employee's of Dell, and for affiliates of Dell.... I guess that coupon was not supposed to get out to the general public. He said in the past they have honored the coupon, and at other times they have notified him that the coupon was invalid and did he want to terminate his purchase... so, for those that took advantage of the coupon, I guess we are in a holding pattern...

They must have done a piss load of business... my order (placed yeasterday afternoon) will not even ship until 10/29/04 (ten days... that tells me they are backed up)... I didn't realize their markup that that great. With the priceing preasure that industry has gone through, a 100% markup seems high (and the fact they are an on-demand company, so if orders slow, they don't have warehouses full of inventory). Although I'm sure they wouldn't have done the deal if they wouldn't have made money...

C-Dog,

Thanks for the info... and as an fyi, evendently the old ratings of the the P4 chips and the ratings of the Pm and (chip that starts with "C") are not rated the same... not sure how it all works, but I've been told they aren't apples to apples when doing a comparison...??