Boxing Week Inspiron Deals & Future

Hello everybody, first time poster here.

First off, for those of you who don't know what boxing day is, it's Dec 26th, and up here in Canada, that is when we have big sales. If you're in the US, think black friday.

Now, my question is, Dell, for their boxing week sale, is having a huge discount on their Inspiron line of laptops.

I've managed to configure this laptop with the following specs for $1369 CAD.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7500 (4MB cache/2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB)
High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch display (1440 x 900)
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 Dimm
250G 5400RPM SATA HDD
256MB NVIDIA ®GeForce™8600M GT

So now the first question is, as far as performance goes, there really is no difference between an XPS and an Inspiron that has identical specs, correct?

Second question is, with the upcoming release if the penryn processors and the speed starting out at 2.1ghz, do you think this is still as great of a laptop for the current price?

The fear I'm having is 6 months down the road, OEMs like dell are going to sell the 2.1ghz in $600 laptops and making this seem like an expensive laptop even given the current savings.

Your thoughts?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

Correct me if I have my exchange rates wrong, but that seems like its about 1100-1200 USD, which is a very good price for that laptop. Currently, I do not think you can get that laptop for that price in the US, and if I could, I would buy it immediately.

I don't know anything about Penryn, but I do know that it will probably (1) take a while for dell to deploy it and (2) will probably offer lackluster performance gains. Others will likely tell you a different story, but people focused on practical performance and not benchmarks, I'd say forget waiting if you need one.

Also, inspirons suck, I have owned many. The XPS line, from seeing friends', is pretty good. Spec wise, the 1520 is similar to the 1530, but the video card is slightly better in the 1530, it looks much better, and is smaller/lighter. Size and build quality are very important, IMO.

6 months down the road, we may all be driving flying cars or taking vacations to the moon....okay well thats an exaggeration. No matter which laptop you buy, it will depreciate in value extremely quickly, so who cares? Right now, I bet you can buy my e1705 that I'm using to type this for less than half of what I paid about a year ago. I'm still happy with my purchase though.

 

The performance will be the same for the same specs, except that the 8600GT in the 1520 uses DDR2 RAM while the 1530 uses faster DDR3 RAM. This is only a consideration if you will be playing recent 3D games.

I expect that Dell will launch the dual-core mobile Penryns next week. I expect that they will be more expensive. I vaguely recall that they are expected to have a 10% performance boost, but will have a big reduction in power consumption, and thus longer battery life.

However, you should be aware that the XPS M1530 is a brand new model while the 1520 will be probably be replaced on January 6 by the 1525, which will be slimmer and wedge-shaped with pattern options for the lids, have HDMI and will hopefully have no headphone noise issue, but will apparently (incredibly) not have a discrete card option at all.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2809709

http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/featuresdetails.aspx/inspnnb_1525?c=au&l=en&s=dhs&cs=audhs1&~lt=popup&~tab=highlighttab

If reports are correct, and you want a discrete graphic card in a 15 inch Dell, the XPS 1530 may be your only choice if you do not buy the 1520 in the next couple of weeks.

 

In a way, that sucks.

What I think I'm going to do is go to a Dell kiosk in the mall and try to haggle the price down a little on the XPS m1530.

Oddly enough, even given the $420 savings, if I go and configure a XPS 1530 with the identical specs and the $100 instant savings, it still only comes up to $100 more than the 1520.

But I think after reading your posts I'll probably sit on it for a little bit longer before I make my decision. I don't really immediately need a laptop but seeing the $400 discount made me think long and hard about it.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback, definitely something to think about. Especially that Inspiron 1525.

 

$1369 CAD is $1396 USD. The damn Canucks are beating us.


Anyway, this basically means they get doubly screwed since most Canadian products are priced higher anyway because the Canadian dollar is usually about $0.80.

And secondly, I got my XPS M1530 (see specs below) for $1199 USD pre-tax.

 

Heh congrats, wanna buy me one and smuggle it up the border?