Which Dell could beat this?

@zenpharaohs

Give the Dell sales rep a call, tell them the components you want and tell him the website is messing up the configuration options. They know all too well about this, just send him an e-mail with a configuration list and let him make a good price.

They can give pretty good deal on the phone compared to buying online. What i did was tell them that i was getting extra RAM and a larger HDD later because they were asking way too much for these components and i ended up paying about 140euros less for everything i wanted compared to having upgraded myself later...and now everything falls under the NBD service which is not the case if you upgrade yourself.

ALWAY call Dell to be sure about available options!!

 

OK I just configured a Dell E6400ATG more or less the same as the T400 specification I put at the beginning of the thread except with the slightly less expensive but possibly preferable P9500 processor. Price? $3,321. Well, OK so much for the ATG version.

The E6400 without the ATG but otherwise similar I get $2,439 starting price, but with "instant savings" it comes to $2,060 - which is pretty good compared to the T400. I will check with Lenovo's site again to see if they have their version of instant savings, but $2,060 would be a good price. Plus, even though it's slower memory for the E6400 there is the balancing factor that it will probably be less expensive to get to 8GB when I do that.

Prevoiusly I was configuring the E6400 with the T9600. I'm on a train at the moment and the WWAN is not playing nice so I'll check back later when I get some more configurations.

 

Performance gain from getting DDR3 is close to almost nothing. The only good thing is that it runs at lower voltages and thus consumes a bit less power. But memory is anyway one of the least power hungry components.

 

Actually, the performance gain is application dependent. I am a highly non-typical notebook user; it's not that uncommon for me to have highly memory bound applications where the theoretical 33% advantage of DDR3-1066 (8533 MB/s) over DDR2-800 (6400 MB/s) would matter.

EDIT: In fact, since my primary laptop died (4GB in Vista 64) I have to use this 4GB Vista 32 machine which is nearly equivalent (T7500 as opposed to T7700). It's incredible how slow my stuff runs on this machine where I only have the 3.2GByte available and I suspect Vista 32 is just unable to swim through huge chunks of it very fast. The performance hit is a lot worse than the CPU clock speed difference (about 9%) would indicate.

Now whether the T400 can actually realize that advantage is a fair question - I'm still looking for benchmarks that might tell me. Note that most of the usual benchmarks that people use for these things (3dMarks SuperPi, etc.) are useless to me. But since I'm the guy writing the applications, it sort of comes down to if the machine can do it? I'll find out how to make it do it.

And I'm going to eventualy jam as much memory in there as possible (I have heard that 8GB DDR3 SODimms might exist - yes, I could use a 16GB system) so the power usage for me could add up more than for other people. Of course, the Dell 6400 has that battery slice which should sort out the traveling power issue. But will I get 8GB DDR2 SODimms? I don't know of any yet, and since that is the older technology maybe there never will be. And just like I don't know if the T400 can really slide through memory at a sustained 8533 MB/s I also don't know if the T400 could accept 16GB memory.

 

@ zenpharaohs

Not to be rude but do you read all the posts? In your posts you say a lot of stuff that has already been answered or it just seems you havent noticed it at all.

Don't judge too much by configuring online...the website gets things wrong in MANY ways...CALL DELL

DDR3 ram has hardly any benefit over DDR2....look for test results
I don't know if these laptops would take 8gb dimm's...think it would need some adjustments for that

 

I suggest the Dell Latitude E6400, I have it and love it.
Check out my review:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=323607

(Please note that I am being picky on my review, I tried to mentioned everything on it, even the small details that about everyone won't care, so you should not get any surprises (the other kind, which doesn't end up good) )

In quick:
- ~5 to 9 hours of battery life (depending on what you do). Note that Vista battery estimate isn't very good. In my case it said, "5 hours and half," but an hour later it says "5 hours"... so don't base your battery life on what the system says. Again it all depends on what you do.
- Quiet system and powerful.
- Solid construct
- eSATA/DisplayPort (backward compatible with HDMI and DVI with adapter converter)
- still has VGA for compatibility
- Ability to have 19 hours of battery life with second battery attached at the bottom of the machine
- Really easy to self service the machine, feels like a desktop PC (witch the help of the online service manual)

Especially that with a really quick phone call you get amazing deals. I got about 300$ off, free Intel Wireless N 5100 upgrade (from the Dell wireless B/G which is what I initially configures the system to), free 9-cell battery upgrade (I took the 6-cell by default), free DVD-burner (I took the DVD player), and free shipping.

Now I ordered my system from Dell Canada, I know in the US their is this never ending special, so I don't know if you can get anything.

 

A: Yes.

B: Hardly any benefit? In this case that is not clear. Most tests I've seen use application benchmarks, and those would not necessarily tell the tale. Not that many applications are really tightly bound by memory bandwidth. Plus, we are talking about DDR3 in one machine and DDR2 in a different machine.

C: I don't know if they would take them either, but since I have heard that they exist in DDR3 SODIMM I'm trying to find out if they will be an upgrade path.

 

You can take $587 off instantly on the Latitude E6400. Here's how:
1. Go to the main laptop listing on Dell's Small Business site. (dell.com/business/laptops)
2. Scroll down and click on the advertisement on the left-hand side that says "Featured Latitude E6400: Up to 19 Hour Battery Life."
3. Configure it to your liking.

Using this method you can configure the laptop to be as cheap as $600, making it a much better value than the T400.

Credit goes to skillazd on fatwallet.com: fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/879947

Enjoy!

PS: Sorry for the lack of links. This is my first post on here.

 

It's looking a lot like Dell E6400.

I have checked - Montevina chipset doesn't seem to be able to use much of the the DDR3-1066 memory bandwith beyond what it can use of the DDR2-800. If the memory is faster but the chipset and/or CPU can't deal with it then it's not really faster. Plus, as far as I have been able to check Montevina can only handle 8GB so any possible higher expansion with DDR3 would not apply. That leaves the power savings of the DDR3 which although, not nothing, can be made up with extra battery. Plus it means that the DDR2 eventual upgrade to 8GB will almost surely cost less. So in the end the memory question looks like a wash - a little less power for DDR3 and a little less cost for DDR2.

I took your suggestion by clicking on the sale link you suggested. I got the $587 "off". That configuration starts with an SSD and battery slice included, but I configured what I wanted and the $587 stayed "off". I decided to purchase this machine:

Note that I am getting the 12-Cell slice and some extra support and service which is why the price is a little high. But it is still a bit less than the T400 configuration even including that.

 

Looks like a nice config indeed. Didn't you want a dedicated GPU though?