About to purchase 2nd 1520 advice please

I've been following these forums for a couple of weeks now and thought it was about time I posted something, anyway, I recieved a 1520 (with 8400GS, T7250 2GB RAM, 160GB HD 5400rpm) 10 days ago that has cpu whine so I'm waiting for dell to collect it for a refund. In the mean time I've decided to get a top line 1520 to last me 5 years through college and university, plus thanks to these forums (sorry forgot who posted it ) I now have a 10% discount for here in the UK.

I've decided on the following specs for definite:

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz,800MHz,4MB L2 cache)

GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB DDR2 dedicated graphic memory

160GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive

15.4" Widescreen WXGA+ (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife

but i'm undecided on how much RAM to buy, I know it's apparently easy to install your own for a fraction of the cost, but I simply don't want too (i'm very busy atm and have no clue when it comes to working inside computers)! As of today dell have are finally letting its UK consumers purchase 3GB of RAM (used to be 1, 2 or 4GB) and I know vista will only recognize and utilize about 3.5GB of that.

The price difference between the two is 3GB +£120 and 4GB for £200, I really want this system to be the best possible but then again saving £80 would be quite nice seeing as dell put the price of the exact same system, with 4GB RAM, up by £33 over yesterday (Due to new offers starting ). Although in the new offers you do now get a free choice of colours and they all include a 2MP webcam.

Finally is it worth the £10 upgrade to an intel 3945 wireless card from the Dell 1390? I have the 3945 in the system thats going back and to be honest I am disappointed in it, my families 5 year old laptop can stay connected in my bedroom yet this laptop often drops connection or doesn't connect for 5mins after a restart

Any advice would be greatfully appreciated, Thank you.

 

unless you are going to run vista 64 dont bother with 4gb of ram. there is no advantage. the intel cards stink as well imo but they are 100% better than the dell ones so def get the intel. or you can later add a atheros based card for around 50$ which IS WAY BETTER than either of the 2. if you decide to do that stay with the dell and save the 10$ to later use it for the atheros card. they are only 35$ shipped from ewiz.com. trust me ive switched all my systems to atheros cards and they blow everyone else away..

the price has dropped drastically in the last few weeks on ram i know.. i bought 4 gb about 2 months ago for 156.00 and hat was dirt cheap during the last sale week 4gb could be found for nearly 40$ per stick for a 2gb stick!!! it was crazy!!!

i would def at least get the t7500 if not higher if you want life out of it.

i personally would also forget the 7200 rpm 160gb drive and get the 250gb 5400rpm at least. it has been shown so many times that a 250gb 5400 performs as well and in some cases better then the size below it in 7200 rpm. i went to a 250gb wd scorpio and it is much better than the 160gb 7200 that i had prior.

 

Thanks a lot for the advice it has given me a lot to consider!

 

The benefit of the faster CPU usually doesn't justify the cost. Any laptop you buy today is going to seem slow in five years regardless of which CPU you get. Unless you have a specific need which most people do not in my experience. Think of it this way. If you bought a laptop five years ago, and it cost £50 to go from the 1.3GHz Pentium M to the 1.5GHz, does it seem like that big of a difference now?

For general purposes the slowest part on a laptop is the hard drive. I don't know which benchmarks are being used to say that 5400RPM drives are as fast as 7200RPM, but in my experience a 7200RPM drive does give the notebook a bit snappier feel. Some of the big newer 5400RPM drives are fairly close to the older 7200RPM drives, due to the higher density.

 

a 5400 rpm of a larger size or dual platter is almost always as fast or in cases faster than the 7200rpm drive of the lower size. there are many places on this forum and many places online that show this. if you are comparing a 200-250gb 7200 rpm to a 250gb 5400 than yes the 7200 will in fact be a faster drive, but when comparing a 250gb 5400 rpm to a 160 7200rpm they are basically equal. you will see little to no difference between the two.

and yes i was primarily speaking of newer drives but take the wd 250gb scorpio for instance for a while this was the speed champ than came the new hitachi's and if you look it is still near the top of the charts ...i use them and its a excellent drive and imo not at all worth spending more money to get a smaller sized 7200rpm drive over a near double the size 5400rpm drive. i also suspect with the newest 320gb drives they will close this gap even more