A few questions on Vostro 1700

I am deciding on whether I should buy a Dell Vostro or not. What caught my eye about it was that it is an inexpensive 17" laptop in all black, which is my favourite look. The other thing is that it has an option of a WUXGA screen res with 260 nit brightness, which seems to be very bright to me. I have a few questions and I would really appreciate some help. Thanks.

1.) I plan on using this laptop in the home mostly. Once in a while I might take it to the cafe, or a friends house. I won't be bringing it on the plane or to school/college. With normal use, with out accidents off course, how long do you think this laptop will last me? Would expecting 3 to 4 years be unreasonable?

2.) For the people with the WUXGA screen. How do you like it? How is the brightness, clarity and color on the display? Do these monitors also suffer from the graney screen issue? Could some people post up screen shots of their display at WUXGA res?

3.) How is this machine with gaming? I will get the 8600gt DDR2 GPU with it. I know that higher the res the harder the GPU will work, since I am going with WUXGA, I know that I will need to run games at a lower res so that the GPU can keep up. Therefore this means that I will not be running the LCD at its native resolution, but much lower. Doesn't this mean that games will look like crap on this machine since the machine is running far from native res? Can I play any of the newer popular games on this machine, or am I stuck playing ones from a few years ago?

4.) How is the build quality? Are the hinges plastic or metal?

 

1. just buy an extended warranty
2. the lcd is great
3. you can't play future games because the gpu is weak
4. made of plastic

 

Hinges are metal.

 

The build quality is very good in my opinion, the base and screen assembly seem to be some kind of metal.

As far as gaming performance is concerned, it isn't bad for a laptop, but not great. I can run Bioshock at 1280x800 with a mixture of low and high settings, and Assassin's creed also at 1280x800 with most settings on medium - high. Crysis will run OK at 1024x768 with all medium settings.

 

With good care laptops on average last 3-4 years. I owned a Inspiron 5100 that lasted 5 years and could have been longer but the hinges broke.

I game on the Vostro 1700 and it's very decent with current games but keep in mind if you get the ultra high resolution your in game performance WILL take a hit.

As I mentioned to you before in another thread 1400x900 looks pretty nice. And it helps keep FPS and performance up while playing games.

The hinges on a Vostro are made of metal as someone previously mentioned but they are also supported by a larger shaft which gives better support. Hopefully loose display panels won't be a common occurrence for these laptops.

Build quality is great for these machines. Are you sure you want a 17" laptop to lug around? These are not the lightest laptops in the world.