First Option: Get the Dell
I have several friends who have them.
- Battery life is great (around 4-5 hours)
- A Pentium-M @ 2.0GHz isn't exactly slow. It's not Athlon 64-FX fast (particularly because of the memory), but it's plenty to play any game
- Get the WUXGA screen if you have good eyesight. You can wow your Apple-loving buddies when you tell them that your notebook's 15" screen has a higher resolution than their 23" Cinema Display HD. And they'll be even more impressed when you tell them that the entire system was less than their monitor.
- The Mobility Radeon 9600 "Pro Turbo" 128M is the same chip as the Mobility Radeon 9700. It's clocked a little lower, but you can always overclock
I have a friend with the Sager 5680 (same as 5690 but with the Mobility Radeon 9600). That thing is a TANK. Trust me, this thing is HUGE. The power adaptor alone is the size of a large brick. The unit itself dwarfs the Dell. Moreover, the thing sucks batteries. You're lucky to get 1.5hrs out of the battery.
Not to mention the fact that the Sager heats up like a toaster on the bottom. The Sager is *not* a laptop. It's a portable desktop.
Second Option: Get neither
Personally, I own a Shuttle SFF system. With a FX 5900XT (soon Radeon 9800 Pro), 1GB DDR400, Athlon XP "3200+" (Overclocked mobile Barton), and a desktop 7200rpm HDD, it will out-game any notebook. Add the 16ms Hitachi CML174SXW, a nice Shuttle backpack, and a GearGrip LCD strap, and I can easily bring my system to any LAN party or event. Not to mention that the whole rig was around $1500 (including the monitor).
For typing documents, I use a Compaq Armada M300. It's 3.1lbs, nice and small, so I can carry it anywhere. It's only a PIII 500, but it's fine for watching DVDs, typing documents, and surfing the net. With an ATI Rage M1 4MB, you're not going to be playing any games except for Starcraft (although I was able to get UT to run semi-decently with the software renderer), but that's what you have your SFF system for.
Gaming notebooks tend to be too heavy to be ultraportable. And while the Mobility Radeon 9700 is pretty fast, nothing compares to Far Cry on a Radeon 9800 Pro (or, better yet, a Radeon X800 Pro / X800XT PE). Plus you get the benefits of full-size drive bay (I'd like to see an 8X DVD burner in a notebook) and a PCI/AGP slot to upgrade and expand.