Dell Studio 1555 Resolution Query...(plz HELP)

Hi Everyone.i am very much new to this forum thing.so please dont mind my mistakes.I am Planning to buy a Studio 15 this month.I am a M.B.B.S. student so dont have much technical ideas.a friend recommended me to join your forum before buying the thing as he said that you guys really help out with any laptop problems.

My Configuration till now is T6500 processor,4GB RAM,500GB HD,Vista Premium 64-bit,256MB ATI HD 4570,backlit keyboard & Mike Ming Seaweed edition.

I am really Confused about the resolution that i should get...720p/900p/1080p??? I will use my lappy to see movies,play games like GTA4 & net browsing.I would Like to state that the place i live,HD videos & Blue-ray discs are a rarity.mostly it is from the DVDs that we see movies.also i have heard that games performance lags in the higher resolution screens.also i have a budget problem.if i get the high-res display i may need to bring down my 500GB to 320GB.so is it worth it??

Is the Mike Ming Pattern worth the extra bucks?i really liked the seaweed pattern..

One last Query...please tell me about the 64-bit compatibility issues..would my 32-bit applications run on the 64-bit OS...will my games performance increase in 64-bit??

Please shed some light on my confusions my techie friends.

 

Hello,
I'm going to answer what i can..

First of all i think the 720P resolution would be fine,1080P seems too big for a 15.6" screen and over here in Ireland they have removed the 900P option.

The only reason i'd buy the 1080p screen is if i had the blu-ray drive too which seems pointless in your country(but that will change i'm sure)

The configuration is very good and will easily last you a long tume,Although the custom design could be seen as a not needed expense...

As for the other things i can't help sorry.

 

Resolution is really such a personal choice; what is great for one person is horrid to another. 1080p is not just useful for media content, but also just simply for having more screen real estate. I for example work with huge amounts of data on a regular basis (we're talking hundreds of millions of records) and pulling that data into analytics packages or Excel, I can't ever get enough screen real estate (I actually end up using two displays most of the time).

A larger resolution will have an impact on gaming performance, but you pretty much always have the option of playing at a lower resolution than native resolution. This Studio is not primarily a gaming machine, so to be honest while it does hold it's own pretty well (from what I've seen), it's not going to be giving you 50 FPS in Crysis at high settings, even if you were playing in 640x480.

Personally I dislike all of the patterns. My personal opinion is that it's money that can be spent elsewhere. It adds nothing to the machine except personalisation; and whilst it's arguable that this is one of the things that makes a notebook unique for each user, I don't really care much for uniqueness in terms of technology I use. Give me a plain black or red colour anyday.

With regards to the applications, the vast majority should run with no problems at all. The only place you may get stuck is that 64 bit operating systems tend to require signed drivers. Most of the time this is absolutely no problem, but it can depend on how obscure your hardware is. I use so many peripherals I couldn't list them all, and the only two that caused me issue is an external sound card and a HSDPA expresscard mobile broadband modem. For probably 95% or more people out there, they should have no problems. Software wise (i.e. MS Office, Photoshop etc) you'll be 100% fine. 64 bit software is the way forward, but Microsoft don't expect everyone to go out and buy all of their software again, so 32bit works perfectly well on a 64bit OS.

 

first of all,a big thanks for ur replies.

actually the thing is that i have tried to read so much on the net on these resolution thing,that once i make up up my mind on one,there is someone who says otherwise...as for e.g. 720p (its too big for the beautiful 15.6' screen that it spoils its beauty), 1080p (its too small for this screen)...what are they trying to mean...i tried to search for some videos on youtube but in vain...i dont want to take the wrong display as i have heard that the display is one of the toughest to upgrade later...

also is GTA4 playable on my configuration??

 

The reason you'll hear so many conflicting pieces of advice on the issue of resolution is exactly the reason I said; it's personal choice. Some people like to say, "meh, that's rubbish" when it doesn't match their own personal choice. Those people are fools.

You could ask people to take a picture of their desktop and state the resolution, and see which you like the best. Other than that, it's impossible to advise you one way or the other. The display is not that hard to upgrade; but it's certainly more work than say your RAM, HDD or CPU is to upgrade.

GTA4 will be playable, but you might have to turn some settings down. FYI GTA4 is a terrible console port and really you need one heck of a machine to play it with everything maxed out.

 

I would go with the 900p. It's not as expensive as the 1080p, but it still looks loads better than 720p; everything will be nice and crisp while still being readable.

I wouldn't worry about GTA IV too much; it won't run all that great at any resolution; as Fragilexx pointed out, it was a really poor port from the console versions.

Although for the record, it is true that higher resolutions will make your graphics card work harder than lower resolutions, and can lead to decreased performance.

 

I agree that "900p" is way better than the "720p" resolution. The "720p" looks too grainy and pixelated for my tastes but the higher resolution screen improves on this substantially.