Dell Inspiron 6400 - Good? bad?

Can anybody advise me on the inspiron 6400.
I am looking to buy one of these and wanted to find out about people's experiences.
Whats the quality of the unit like? Is it fast?
and the obligatory question, will it run Vista with the 256mb video card that comes with it?

Cheers.

 

i like my inspiron 6400,,, it was a step up from my inspiron 8600..

got true life, quanta screen -wxga ...happy with it...some don,t like it,,but i like the colors with it

if you are going to college, its okay,,but its a large notebook...those getting a 1705 for college,,, personally,,i think it would be too large to carry around. the 15.4 inch would as large as i would go for that if thats what you are going to do with it.

could have a better video card,,but the x1400 will play many games,,as long as the settings are not too high

overall,,its a nice notebook for the price...i got a steal on mine,,it was $400 off, with a free upgrade,, believe it was the dvd,,and the intel pro also was free...so all i had to buy was the video card...all for $786. not going to get a notebook from anyone eles for that price, with the hardware i got.

i saw the new sonys the other day,,not bad,,but you are going to pay, thats why dell sells more than anyone eles.

 

I'm really happy with my 6400. It's a very good laptop and it can go from really cheap for a configuration that will be useful for a comon user or it can get around $1500 for a very good configuration.
It's vista ready and I think the x1400 will be doing a pretty good job for that OS, even if you can easily find a better card for gaming even if this one let's you play even the lastes games (not at the highest resolution, but it's something!).
If i have to say something that i didn't like was th ebuild quality. Don't get me wrong, is really good but I think it could have benn a little better.

Another thing you won't be getting a better deal anywhere, look for the coupons!

 

i'm planning on buying a 6400. i'm probably gonna order it tomorrow or the next day. i'm curious about the coupons. i'm in canada so i gotta get it from dell.ca. do you guys know of any coupons for dell.ca?

 

Well, I had two E1505's (exact same as 6400), and both had major problems (one was making annoying noises, the other refused to turn on one day), but I would definitely say an E1505 is an "adequate" laptop.

It seemed solid enough to carry around but not to inspire confidence, the screen was bright enough but the rainbow sparklies got quite annoying, the graphics power was enough to play Oblivion but not very well, the speakers were pretty great for a laptop but still nowhere near the level of normal computer speakers, and the look was undesirable but didn't make me vomit.

Here are the major pro and con, in my opinion:

Pro = price
Con = heat

The hard drive definitely had issues keeping cool on both of the E1505's I had - not just subjectively (got pretty hot on the bottom and on the face vents) but the actual HD temperature meter would give me warnings if I was doing any major file transfers or formatting. I had to physically prop up the back of the laptop on a box or something to get the temperature to stop rising (it was getting pretty close to the point where it would shut off automatically).

I definitely wouldn't get another E1505, due to the heat (and also that I now realize a 15.4" is just plain too bulky to take around with you comfortably), but I hear they're going for pretty great prices nowadays .