Alternatives to e1520 w/o $200 coupon

As most of the students out here already know, Dell quit stacking the $200 student coupon on the Fourth of July. Quite a contrast to the sale we'd been hoping for, and a bit of a shock to the bank account. I'm sure many of you began thinking, "Well, should I really get that now?", as I did when I saw the change. $200 might not be too much if you're buying a new car, but it is for a laptop. So I went out and compared all the major competitors to the repriced e1520.

Last night I went to all the major manufacturer's websites, and spent a good 2-3 hours comparing every reasonably-priced and reasonably-specced 15 and 17-incher to the 1520. I've been looking at a pretty much maxed-out 1520 with the Premium Care (7%) bundle, and the competition was disappointing even given the Dell price increase. However, HP was competitive enough through their education program to be worth considering, and Sager's laptops are now cheaper than the Dell's with all specs equal or better, with no accidental damage coverage being the only weak point.

The e1520 I was considering came out to $1587 after taxes at the lowest point it was priced, July 1st. The specs were pretty well maxed out. Today, it costs $1801. Hence why it doesn't look like such a good deal anymore.

By comparison, an HP dv6500t with one degree lesser processor (T7300), and GeForce 8400M GS (43% of Dell's power), and 1800 RPM less on the hard drive costs $1531 with taxes and the same warranty. Before, the $56 difference for Dell was well worth it, but at $270 the HP is worth considering.

And an HP dv9500t 17-inch with the same processor as Dell, a GeForce 8600M GS (77% of Dell's power), and 1800 RPM less on the HD costs $1805, $4 more than the Dell. The nominal weight is 7.7 pounds, which puts it about 1.1 pounds above the e1520. It's probably still not as good a deal as the $1801 e1520, but if you're considering a 17-inch, it's worth considering.

The Sager NP2090 with all identical specs as the Dell e1520 except 512 MB VRAM instead of 256 MB comes out to $1759 after shipping - $42 less than Dell. With the coupon, getting Dell over it wasn't a hard choice, but now...you might want to check out the Sager forum. As noted, this Sager price is without a Complete Care (accidental damage) equivalent (the HP and Dell quotes include that). The HPs will come out about $60 cheaper without that, and the Dells...who knows with their pricing. Probably about the same with their 7% discounts.

As to the other alternatives, those are the best I've found so far. Gateway, IBM, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Sony, and Alienware all came out more expensive without any gain in power, even at the more expensive Dell price. Samsung doesn't sell notebooks in the U.S., and I couldn't find Sharp's notebook section nor get Acer's to work properly.

As for myself, I'm not sure yet whether I'll still get the 1520. I'd like to wait for the price to come down, but with Dell's backlog of orders that's not a very feasable option unless I want to start school with a Pentium 166 MHz laptop without a working battery.

I'm heading to the mall tomorrow and seeing what the Dell representative there offers. I've got Dell's price history down to the cent on an Excel spreadsheet (as well as tons of other data on Excel, WordPad, and NotePad), and if the offer is close to the historical minimum I plan to buy on the spot. If he can't offer anything better, it's back to the drawing board for me.

It does make the models at Best Buy, Micro Center, and Circuit City look more appealing - if they only offered the processor I wanted on a non-Mac I might buy one there, too.

Here's links to the competition if you're reconsidering:
HP Higher Education
Sager Notebooks

 

I would HIGHLY insist that you call up Dell and talk to a customer service rep. It doesn't stack on the website anymore, but with a little bit of nudging and telling them your deal that you had originally, they'll manually override the system and put on that $200 student coupon on top of everything (I actually talked to a customer rep myself and it only took about a minute to convince her to put it on there...though it takes about 10 minutes on their side to tack it on but hey being put on hold for a few min to save $200 is better than not getting a discount)