About to buy an E1705!

Intel® Core™ Duo Proc T2500 (2GHz/667MHz/2 X 1MB L2 Cache)
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
FREE!1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS
120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
Integrated Audio
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 Internal Wireless
Primary Battery 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
1Yr Ltd Warranty, 1Yr Mail-In Service, and 1Yr HW Warranty Support
Free SKIN Promotion 17 - Free Promotion for 17 inch Skin
Future Operating Systems Windows Vista™ Capable
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition re-installation CD

I'll probably upgrade the RAM myself to 2 Gb of 677MHz later.

Cost: $2007.00
After $750 coupon:
TOTAL:$1,257.00

Any suggestions? I'm going to order this before the $750 coupons expire. This will mostly be used as a desktop replacement with some games thrown into the mix. I think this is the perfect configuration, the price is just slightly over 1999 so I can get the most out of the 750 coupon. (The $10 dollar reinstallation cd pushed the price from 1997 to 2007 and saves 750 dollars lol).

 

I'd go with XP Media Center rather than Home since Media Center is essentially XP Pro. Everything else looks good I just put together a similar system but I'm going with the new N wireless card.

 

Well, media center is only like $20 more. Although I'm not buying a TV tuner. I guess it'll come in handy if I decide to buy a TV tuner later.

The only thing that is preventing me from buying it right now is that merom is starting to appear (on the dell website for the e1405 like someone posted). If I didnt see that post this morning I probably would have bought it already. I mean, I can wait a few weeks for merom, but not if the coupons are gone. The $750 coupon expires on the 27th, and I haven't looked at Dell often enough to know whether this kind of coupon is pretty common, or whether I'll be stuck buying a $2000+ merom notebook with the same configuration otherwise if I don't take this deal now.

 

Don't know about the whole Merom thing. It would be pretty frustrating if the Merom chip came out just 2 weeks after getting your PC.

It is a bit of a gamble to wait and see what happens with the coupons. I'll say the $750.00 coupons have been pretty regular the past month or so, this is as long as I've tracked them, but there is no telling what will happen when Merom shows up.

Maybe the reason for the coupons have to do with the fact that Dell is trying to unload Yohan? It's pretty strange thinking that dual core laptops just recently hit the scene and now the CPUs are already being replaced.

Mike

 

Looks like I'll take the risk and wait a bit after all. With so many posts popping up now regarding Dell about to ship merom laptops Real Soon (TM) it would be a bummer to buy a yonah now.

Here's to hoping that similiar coupons will be available for use on their merom laptops.

 

You probably won't notice the performance difference between a Merom and a Yonah except for benchmarks and rendering/encoding.

If you can wait until the end of the month, Dell *should* be offering Meroms by then (the official date for availability is July 27th). However, I don't think you can go wrong with that deal you posted. You'll end up paying more for one with a Merom, and possibly have a delayed ship date.

Could be. The manufacturers don't particularly like that Intel is shoving the Meroms at them so soon, but that doesn't mean they will stop selling the Yonahs. They will continue to be sold for quite a while, especially the entry-level T2050 and T2250.

 

I understand that there probably won't be much of a difference between merom and yonah. If I already had a yonah computer I wouldn't get merom just to have a slightly faster processor and 64bit support. But since I can wait until around September I guess I'll wait and see.

Higher price would be an issue too, but it should still be in my budget, as long as dell still has coupons. Otherwise I can always just configure the cheapest ram and harddrive and upgrade those myself later.

 

omg merom has only 2 mb more l2 cache, 2 mb l2 cache is plenty for any applaication unless your encoding 18 tings at the same time

 

Not all Meroms will have 4MB of cache. The T5500 (1.66GHz) and T5600 (1.83GHz) will both have 2MB, while the higher-end T7200 (2.0GHz), T7400 (2.13GHz), and T7600 (2.33GHz) will. However, all should be great performers.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3058