Advice on Dell Vostro 1700 Please

Hi all

I'm new here so go easy on me please

I'm looking at the Vostro 1700 did start by looking at the Inspiron Laptops but by the time i speced it up it seems to work out alot more than the Vostro's Though i didn't want to break £600ish and i'm just over £650 atm not sure if i should call and try to haggle them down?

Is it worth going for a bigger a screen 17" instead of the 15" ones?I really don't think i'll play games on my laptop other than FM08 to be honest so i'm swaying towards the 128MB nVidia® GeForce® 8400M GS.



It will be used more than anything for surfing , watching dvd's , office work and downloading on. I only play Css and Football manager 2008. It will be more my wifes laptop as i have a rig in our office which i use for most things and would rather play games on that than the laptop.

Though most games we play are on our Wii Console


Looking at this spec :-

OR

Is it to over specced for what i will use it for?

Also is it easy enough to wipe Vista and install Win Xp as i'm not a fan of Vista. I've done a number on installs on my home pc is it the same?



Any more input would be great please.

Thank you.

 

If you dont need the extra processing power go with the slower processor and 2 hard drives - if you want the horse power then go with the faster processor and the single drive. For what you want they'd both be adequate.

It's easy to install XP but you will run into the AHCI driver problem - you'll have to install as IDE and then a few tricks to change to ACHI should you want to and you'll have to search around for the drivers for XP. It's a bit more work but not prohibitive.

It's a great machine and I love having the bigger screen as I come from desktops and am used to the real estate (it's your link to the machine so for me it's the most important aspect). It is fairly heavy but other than that it's cool.

 

Thanks for your reply the offer on these is untill 20th Feb so i'll keep looking but i can't see anything better for the price nor for what i need it for.

Is it easy enough to add another drive along side the drive already there at a later date?

Thanks.

 

I dont think you'll find anything better for the price. I certainly didn't and the same spec Inspiron 1720 would've cost me another £250-£300. And a comparable machine from someone else more than that (similar spec Asus was another £200 on top of that)

Plus it comes with Next Day Business Warranty - you have a problem a technician will come to you the next day. No sending the machine back.
I've had the screen replaced twice (6 months after purchase and 1 month after that) and they came the next day and swopped it out in ten minutes. Top service.

On the 2nd hard drive front - yeh it's really easy but you need the HDD2 cage and the interposer which connects the harddrive to the motherboard. They dont come with it and it can be a hassle getting them. I got it recently but luckily had a good relationship with my rep after getting the screen replaced and he sorted it out. For future reference the parts you'll need are -

Dell Part Number C7586 - Hard Drive Carrier for HDD bay #2
Dell Part Number XK231 - Interposer (interfaces HDD to laptop)
4 X M3 x 3mm Countersunk Microscrews for drive to caddy
3 X M2.5 x 5mm Countersunk Microscrews for caddy to lappy

Make a note

 

Do you have a link to this offer please?
Thank you

 

Thanks for that any idea where i could get them from as dell online doesn't seem to stock them ebay maybe?

Also do any of the Vostro 1700 come with HDMI?

Well i went for the 449 price one then built it up

Code:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/4x_vostro_1700?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

Hope it helps you out.

 

You're best going through Technical Support by phone. You're luck may vary though customer support and the Dell site is rubbish for any parts. As long as you have the part numbers they can't mess it up. But try tech support first.

No Vostro 1700 has HDMI. S-Video and VGA but you can output HD via the S-Video to Component via a Dell adaptor (apparently - no experience of doing it).

 

You are correct. I forgot to mention that.

 

Hello all. Sorry to jump in on this thread, but it is on topic. I unfortunately did not know about slipstreaming the driver in before installing XP (set up dual boot with XP and Vista) and I turned off ACHI. I then investigated turning it back on and found warnings that I may lose the data, so I decided to just live with it.

Can someone please reply with what my options are? I am a technician, so it doesn't need to be detailed. If you can point me to a site or article on converting back to ACHI I can take it from there. I didn't really care until I saw the performance difference on another 1700 machine.

Thanks.