so yup after the inspiron 1520 disaster where I didn't get the laptop advertised I have bought another.

dell precision m6300

specs;
CPU: t8300 - 2.4Ghz 3mb l2
17" WUXGA (1900*1200) screen
2GB 667mhz RAM
1600M (8700GT equivilant GPU) 256MB
9 cell 80watt battery
fingerprint reader, bluetooth, wifi-n... all the little gadgets

arriving tomorrow, just praying that it doesnt turn out like the inspiron did.. we shall see.

what I liked about it was that it is a power house yet will retain nearly a 4 hour battery life when used lightly, it is fairly weighty but no big deal atm, if it really is a big deal at uni I'll sell up and get an xps m1530

Thats a pretty sexy resolution for a 17" screen.

I've never heard of the 1600M. Is that just dells way of naming things?

its the nvidea quadro cards fx1600m

but basically an 8700GT with a special set of drivers optimised for auto-CAD and such applications (open GL based programs)

Eek! Quadros arn't for gaming. I don't know if theres any physical difference in the card or not but I think you can still get good game performance with that.

I remember with a lot of old GeForce cards you could do a resistor hack to turn them into Quadros.

http://www.geocities.com/tnaw_xtennis/Quadro1-2.htm

Amazing how they find that kind of stuff.

Anyways, what happened with your Inspirion?

Cool.

Personally, I'd have just gone with the Dell XPS 1530. That thing is a SEXY beast. Of course, though, if you had more money than money than money you have money of (yes, really), you'd go with the Dell XPS 1730. I've got a Dell XPS 1710 (company hand-me-downs rock!) and it's beautiful (if not old, poor little 6800 ultra).

But then, the full sized keyboard is what would make me go that way. That, and I like BIG laptops. The 17" 1920x1200 screen is disgustingly awesome. I don't think I could use a system that wasn't at 1920x1200 now. I'm spoiled.

Good luck with the new system man.

EDiT: WAIT WAIT WAIT, only 2gb of memory? You got XP with it, right? Vista is better with 3.25gb of memory (or go with x86-64 and get 4gb), but it's not as if it'll die or anything. Memory is the easiest thing to upgrade aftermarket anyways, so I usually just buy the cheapest through Dell and throw in what I want later.

It's got business edition vista but dont fret I intend on triple booting:
1) XP sp3
2) vista
3) ubuntu

but bad news delivery got delayed till thursday

and as for my inspiron I bought it off ebay for £400 but it was packing 2.2ghz c2d 8600GT 120GB 7200RPM drive nice resolution screen (slightly above 720p) which was cheap back then so I bought it...
It then arrive with a celeron 540M, 1GB RAM vista basic x3100 graphics basically a bag of shit
oppend dispute 1 month later won it, and had to send item back at my expense

It arrived

and yeh brand new 3 year warantee should have cost almost a grand off ebay £675 FTW

very happy just been playing company of heroes and runs it sweetly at 1900*1200 all settings high

battery life even suprised me doing nothing just browsing webpages (no embeded flash) we are talking best part of 5 hours

start cracking out some gaming and your talking less than 1.45

now to aquire a copy of crysis...heh

What was the story with the inspiron 1520? I have one of those...

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