About to buy a Vostro 1500, couple quick questions

My primary uses for this laptop will be at work in the office, movies, iTunes, Internet, and World of Warcraft. I'm trying to cut costs while still trying to be able to have a good laptop that will last for a while. Here are my current specs I'm gonna go with:

2G RAM
160 SATA 5400 RPM hard drive
128 NVIDIA 8400 GS

Here are my questions:

1) I'm thinking of adding on Vista and was curious if the Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB) work just fine for Vista as well as for WoW, multi-program tasking, etc., or would I have to upgrade to the Core 2 Duo T7250 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)?

3) I've read up on the pros and cons of TrueLife, but I'm still unsure which way to go. Any words of wisdom?

Thanks!

 

I would upgrade but that's me. What type of budget are you working with?

 

I don't think the 1.5 would have a problem with WoW. The 1.5 and 8400m should play the game decent. Buy the cheapest amount of memory available from dell and then upgrade later - it will be cheaper. But if it has to go back to Dell, swap their memory in.

 

Instead of upgrading the CPU I'd upgrade the graphics card.. how much would the 8600 cost?..

And for the screen get it with truelife, if you will be working indoors most of the time then you won't have any problems!

 

Both my wife and me are getting laptops, but she's gonna go with the Inspiron 1525 as she doesn't game and needs it more for work. We wanted to spend about $1200-$1300 total.

 

The 8600 would cost an extra $100.

 

8600 is a good investment... great card and usually GPU is the bottleneck in gaming over the CPU

 

honestly, you can have a vostro1500 with T7XXX processor, 8600 gpu, 2gb ram, and it will still be very cost effective compared to other vendors, if comparison is any basis for your purchase.

gpu, if you can afford, you should upgrade it. this is a particular part that has little or no chance for further upgrade. so best to get the most out of it.

i would suggest take the processor upgrade, maybe even goin further than the the T7250, because the price difference is not exceptional. the T5470 is sufficient tho and the processor is usually not bottlenecking the system.

if your are not doing heavy file writing, transfer to disk, write to disk, your storage space would suffice.

In all, the vostro1500 is certainly not positioned to be as costly as an xps1530. In fact in its earlier inceptions, the vostro 1500 can be configured to the same specs as an inspirion 1520, and yet still cost much lower.

morale of the story, correct me if i am wrong guys, vostro line is meant to be highly cost effective and yet not compromising on specs and performance.

 

I would upgrade the GPU before upgrading the processor. Otherwise its fine as is.

 

http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=2211152

Check this link out I can get you a great deal on a vostro

 

Please do not spam your website. You can get a better deal straight from dell.

 

I was just pointing him to a great deal.. If you check dell website the price is higher, than what I am listing the item for. But sorry for the link if you think it's spam

 

I recently bought a Vostro 1700 and love it. I love the screen, the look of the laptop and the fit and finish. I purchased mine when DeLL was having their $500 off sale on select Vostro's.

I highly recommend them.