Costco Inspiron 15r vs. 17r -- which is better value?

I bought the Inspiron 15r at Costco a couple weeks ago, but it's still in the box since I was having second thoughts about a laptop vs. all-in-1. Today, I went back to Costco to compare the 15" and 17" screens.

I looked at the exact 15r and a newer 17r side by side to compare screens. The 15r is a 720p screen while the 17r was a 1080p screen. I thought the 15r looked pretty good, though the 17r seemed to have less glare.

The 17r had better sound, though. Both have 8 gb ram, 1 tb hd. The 15r has the invidia 525 video card, the 17r is integrated. The 15r has the i7-2670qm but the 17r has the i7-3612qm. I see the newer processor has better passmark scores, but I don't know if that'll really mean that much to me, a non-gamer.

The 17r is $799 vs $699 for 15R. Is the upgraded processor, full hd, and better sound worth $100 (also giving up the discrete graphics)

 

You are probably looking at the older 15R, N5110. TBH HD 4000 will come close to the GT525M offered in the 15R, but you are getting a 1080p screen, and a newer platform. But it's also a 17" laptop vs 15.6" so hard to really "compare" them.

 

So, a 17" is considered to be less preferable? What if I rarely plan to move it from the desk? I recently bought a tablet so the portability of a notebook became less important, yet I don't have space for a big CPU and monitor, do I started considering a desktop replacement notebook.

 

I would say the 7720 (17R SE) and with smallest configuration.
The gt650 is way to powerfull to step a side from. Also more future proof

 

Thanks, but they don't sell the Special Edition at the Costcos near me, and those on the Dell website are out of my price range.

The two I'm comparing are both at the brick and mortar stores and are only 699 and 799, with a two year warranty.

 

Well just choose the one with most future proof hardware.

For me (if i number all hardware)...the GPU & Screen is the most important. Second the CPU (of course). The harddrive and ram is not that important. Ram costs nada 2gb for $20 here i live. Harddrive doesnt matter a thing. Who cares uf you have 7200rpm or a ssd.

 

There is no doubt that the integrated HD 4000 GPU in the new Ivy Bridge i7 CPUs is a bigger step up than the underlying CPU power improvement. I'm no game expert but from what I read, the inclusion of DirectX 11 support for HD 4000 and some hardware improvements means that it's much better than HD 3000 for games. However I also read that for the very latest and most demanding games, like Diablo III, the HD 4000 still struggles.

I specifically chose the 15R N5110 because it was affordable and has a GT 525M GPU which can be enabled to hardware accelerate Adobe Mercury Playback Engine and so dramatically speed up video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. Integrated graphics aren't supported for this.

Ian