Hey guys, I recently started looking for a new laptop, and saw dell had a deal on the studio 15's ($275 off + no interest 9 months). Thought I'd run the specs by the afterdawn community before going ahead with the purchase.
Studio 15 Notebook
Operating System : Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
Processors : Intel® Core? 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz/1066Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
Memory : 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz 4GB
Keyboard : Back-lit Keyboard
LCD Panel : 15.6? High Definition+ (900p) Bright LED Display with TrueLife? and Camera
Video Card : 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
Hard Drive : Size: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
Combo or DVD+RW Drive : 8X Slot Load Super Multi (DL DVD+/-R Drive + RAM support)
Sound : High Definition Audio 2.0
Wireless Networking : Dell Wireless 1397 802.11g Half Mini-Card
Battery : 56 Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
Price : $779
basically I'd like to know;
1. is there a better laptop you know of for cheaper on the market?
2. should i upgrade the battery to 8 cell
3. can this connect to an hdtv with HD res
4. is this setup good enough for minor gaming (Counter Strike, DoD, HL2 ep 1/2/... ect).
5. does $779 sound like a pretty good deal for this setup
6. anything else you see in this setup that you personally would upgrade
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147995 Personally i like this better. It is a bit more expensive but should be better suited for HD playback and I know it has an HDMI port on it. It should playback Blu-Ray as long as your not doing any multi-tasking at that time. I doubt the Dell would playback HD content very well. Bigger hard drive. Built in mini sub woofer. Bigger hard drive. bigger screen, and compared to a 2 year old Dell Inspiron 1520 its 10x lighter and has 10x better heat dispersion.
As per your questions, for the price it seems pretty fair. If you have the fund, the battery upgrade wouldnt hurt if you dont plan to be tied down much, but might be a bit heavier. I dont know if it has connections for an HDTV or not. It certainly doesnt list an HDMI port in those specs, but look at the connection types and see if HDMI is listed. At a guess I would say it may play back those games with lowest settings, maybe medium but definitely not high!
Personally I love the HDX series right now for the reasons stated above, but as I said for the price it does seem like a fair build, just a bit weak in the gpu department.
