Black or Silver? Warranty? The Decisions!

Hi Everyone,

I'm an HP refugee that can't seem to make up my mind on getting an Inspiron 1720 or Vostro 1700.

I can bust my budget to get a 2 Year in home warranty for a Vostro but I have to sacrifice the Penryn processor and go to a 2.1 GHZ or I can get a one year in home warranty on a loaded Inspiron with T9300 for a couple of hundred dollars less.

My Visa also mirrors whatever warranty type I get for an additional year so I'm covered there.

Then I have a cosmetic dilemma where every laptop I've ever owned is framed in black around the LCD. When I look at the Inspiron, all I see is silver, latches where the LCD locks, little stuff like that. It's very odd to me to notice that...I guess you just get used to the silver and not notice it?

I sound so vain but coming off a DV9700T, I can't help but compare the looks...of course, the DV9700T received in mid-February is already in the shop for repairs so I'm not doing much looking at it right now either!!

I appreciate your thoughts on this. It's so hard not to be able to compare the Inspiron and the Vostro side by side. I've only been able to see a 1520 for that matter so I haven't even gotten to see their 17" notebooks at all.

 

I would go for the T9300 CPU.

I can't help you w/ the rest of the issues.

 

You get used to the silver, though it still won't have the look that the HP does.

The T8100 is a Penryn processor by the way, and I doubt that you would notice a huge difference between the two unless you are doing something totally reliant on the CPU.

Be warned with the Visa warranty stuff though, Dell won't do anything for you, you will have to foot the bill for repairs, and then send it to Visa and hope that they will approve it. It's not warranty, it's insurance. Also, I don't know if this would apply, or if it was a bad Visa rep, but my dad did the same with his Inspiron 5000e, and they told him that the Visa warranty overlapped the Dell Extended warranty.

Greg

 

Hmm, SpeedyMods. I wonder if it's the same thing because it's called Visa Warranty Manager and the terms say that it picks up the day your original warranty expires. It also says it's a warranty that is the exact same as your original but only covers 1 additional year. I didn't know the T8100 was a Penryn, though!


I could shave some money off the price by getting mail in service instead of in home but I like the idea of not having to package my computer up and send it off to someone who may or may not care how careful they are...unfortunately, I have experience with an old laptop that came back in really bad shape from HP repairs.

Anyway, I think my main hangup at this point is cosmetics. I know that sounds silly (and downright terrible!) and it's not like I'm going out to show this off but I will use it a lot so I'll be looking at it a lot.

From what I can see, you can't turn off the touchpad by pushing a button on your laptop and that kinda bothers me too. Little stupid stuff like that (me, not the computer!) that's making me skittish.