D520 satisfaction poll

Hi guys, I have been looking at various laptops for a long time, trying to get the best bang for my buck. I am currently looking at a d520 that comes with Freedos.
Who else here has a D520? How do you feel about the laptop in general?
Anyone who has purchased one with Freedos, is it not a big deal to then install XP on it? I'd rather not pay for XP since I already have a spare copy.
Thanks for any information.

 

Good sturdy laptop. Does all that it was made for.

 

Wow, so only one person here actually owns this laptop?
I am able to get one for $569 with a 1.66 C2D processor, 512mb of ram, CD-RW/DVD, 6 cell battery, standard ratio matte screen (which I think is what I would prefer), 80 gig HD, and all the standard stuff. Does this seem like a good deal? This is the first C2D I found for this anywhere near this price and it should be solidly built and have good battery life.

 

Are you looking at the 14" or the 15" screen?

 

I'll be fine with either one, I am not really concerned about it.

 

Yeah I was going to say that they don't make the machine smaller if you select 14" (at least that's my understanding) so if you want a 14" you might look at Thinkpad to get a lighter and more compact machine. But then I looked at the Lenovo site and realized... they don't sell 14" non-widescreen Thinkpads anymore. I guess the non-widescreens are just getting rarer and rarer. Too bad... I kind of liked the 14" standard ratio Thinkpads.

Edit: I'll also add that I have 14.1" standard ration XGA right now, and the DPI is kind of low... I don't think I'd personally want a 15" XGA. So if you get one of the 15" screens, you might want to get the 15" SXGA screen, unless you are ok with really low DPI.

 

Would have liked an internal Verison wireless option. An option for discrete graphics would've been a real + as well. Other then that it I cant think of any issues outside of stuff that every other dell suffers with as well, like awful viewing angles and horrible boot up performance.

 

I had looked at the specs for the screens and I would either take the 14.1" version or the SXGA 15", didn't see a real purpose to getting the normal 15". The extra $120 for that better screen does make a significant difference to me since I am trying to spend as little as possible while still getting a decent machine so I was just planning on the 14 incher.

 

I strongly looked at the D520 and looked at a lot of reviews on the web. I am not a fan of widescreens yet, but am getting use to it. I wanted something to replace my 6 year old Dell 8000 Inspiron with a 14" standard aspect. The 520 looked great except for the non-dedicated video chip with no ATI or Nvidia option. I went for the D820. I would have gone for the D520 if it would had another video chip option.

 

My opinion of 14" 520 is don't do it. All you get is a wider bezel and a smaller screen that looks cheap and too small for the notebook. The 14" 520 and 15" 520 are the same size and weight. I honestly don't even know why they offer the 14" 520. If the 14" was actually a smaller laptop then that would be a different story.

 

But the 15 inch screen is less than an inch larger and it has the exact same resolution so it will actually be less sharp.
The only other benefit I could think of would be that theoretically won't the 14.1" screen draw slightly less on the battery?

 

No thats not true. I have 2 520's. One with 14" and one with 15". Both are 1024x768. The 15" is bigger but still perfectly clear. The high res 15" option would be even better. I wish I would have just paid the extra money and got the high res 15" on both of them. But between the 2 there is no question the 15" is alot nicer since the notebooks are the same size. If the 14" was a smaller lighter notebook then yeah. But having a big thick bezel on any laptop is annoying to me when I know it could just as easily be more screen space.