Dell Inspirion 7000, Should I Buy It?

I was looking at Best Buy the other day and the Dell Inspirion 7000 15.6" laptop caught my eye: Best Buy : dell inspiron 7000 - Best Buy

I'm a college student looking for a well-built, reliable laptop that will last me 4-5 years that has respectable battery life (5+ hours of web browsing, word processing, etc.). With the aluminum build and the use of Gorilla Glass for the screen, it seems hard to resist.

The main reason I'm asking is because I've always had a bias against Dell due to laptops I previously owned not being reliable. Is this laptop an exception? Feel free to list your opinions of this laptop or recommend any others (my budget is no higher than about $1200 but prefer cheaper if possible).

 

I have the 15 in because I like big screen to work with school stuff and i don't mind the weigh that much since I'm a pretty big guy. Moreover, it has HDMI port which I've found very helpful streaming movies to my tv. If you don't need any of those things, I'd recommend you get the 14in which will be a lot more portable. You can work with Dell to fix any of the issues you have after purchase, they have been really nice to me. Sometimes I look at a few retina macbooks around the campus and I kindda wish I went with the slim 14 in one. Hah. But it might be just me then.

 

Put this way it has W8 on it are you ready for it and do you know how to tweak or use it correctly? That should be your first questions to yourself otherwise you can get a older model that has W7 on it if your more familiar with O/S. So before buying go to your local BB and play with one like that your looking at to get a feel is this the laptop you want. If it came in W7 O/S I myself would by dell again. But only if it was XPS...I do have 1525 and XPS dell and those so far have given me good results they were all Intel Duo 2 Core processors....never get a AMD processors you will waste money and battery life and performance. Make sure if you buy this Dell it has dedicated GPU just incase you want gaming as well - this dedicated GPU will blow away any Intel HD can offer when gaming and also dedicated GPU has their own RAM to improve performance rather then shared RAM that can be alot less they advertised when the system shares the RAM with the CPU and GPU. As to getting a 14 don't even get one they know they will nickel and dime you for getting one when a 15" will more then suffice your needs for 4-5 years...it is as much portable as the 14". And for the ports trust me HDMI is way better the VGA port and more USB the better and also should you need it the OD will come in handy as it will mean you don't have to lugg around more hardware just to use your laptop.