Dell 700m or 9100?

[MIDIman]

I'm buying a laptop today with two purposes 1) portable webcasting via Realmedia and 2) Content Creation (Photoshop, Macromedia suite, some light video editing). I'm trying to stay under $1500-1600. Configuring both of these comes to around 1400-1500 with the following:

15" WXGA (9100) vs 12" (700m)
*P4 2.8g on the 9100 vs PM 725 (1.6g) on the 700m
512mb
*60gb 7200 on the 9100 vs 40gb on the 700m
Free 24x cdrw/dvd
Free Dell b/g
12-cell (9100) vs 4-cell (700m).
*64mb 9700 (9100) vs ? on the 700m?

A few questions:

- Is the screen glossy on either of these?
- Is the clear winner the 9100?
- Performance difference between these CPUs under heavy content creation tasks? very curious about this - its hard to find comparitive reviews.
- What video chip is in the 700m?

- Got a better idea for under $1600? I like the IBM's, but from what I've seen, most other brands just can't beat this when the price max is $1600.


A few points:

- I don't need a DVD burner
- I think I'll probably need the 7200rpm drive
- I don't need super-long battery life

 

[Feneant2]

I would not get the 9100 unless you planned on using it to play games or for desktop replacement and little movement. For any other purpose, the machine is just too big to be worth it without going middle to high end. It is thick and weighs 10 pounds. Everyone I've shown it too tell me that they would not get it because of its size. Also, battery life is 90 minutes if you're lucky on the 9100

 

[MIDIman]

Is there any kind of middle ground then? I've learned that the 700m uses Intel's Extreme 2 for graphics, and I'm a bit worried about the performance of shared ram on this laptop.

Are there any good dedicated ram video chip based laptops that won't hinder weight and size?

 

[saechaka]

you can go to the sony style home page and configure the S150 orwith a150 with a 9600 mob. exp. but if you can find a sony 200 e coupon on ebay, then that'll sweeten the deal. i almost decided to do this but for the price can't beat the 700m.

 

[Feneant2]

The Dell 600m might be a good choice, it has M10 ATI graphics (Radeon 9600 mobility) and doesn't appear too big, but the 9100 is huge.

 

[MIDIman]

What about the 8600? Has the following - its lighter (6 pds versus 9-10), 1.5" high and still has the features I need at the cost I need it at...basically about $100 more.

15" WXGA
PM 725 (1.6g)
512mb
60gb 7200
Free 24x cdrw/dvd
Free Dell b/g
8-cell
128MB DDR ATI 9600 Pro

 

[Abhi]

The 8600 is a good alternative.

 

[jvarszegi]

The Dell 600m might be a good choice, it has M10 ATI graphics (Radeon 9600 mobility)

No, it doesn't. The T42 has the 9600 and FireGL, but the 600m has wimpier MR9000 graphics (still a damn sight better than integrated graphics any day).

 

[manko]

Originally posted by: MIDIman
I'm buying a laptop today with two purposes 1) portable webcasting via Realmedia and 2) Content Creation (Photoshop, Macromedia suite, some light video editing). I'm trying to stay under $1500-1600. Configuring both of these comes to around 1400-1500 with the following:

For those purposes, the 8600 would really be your best bet, because of screen and keyboard size, battery life and weight.

I'm not sure about the ports on the D600, it doesn't seem to have firewire, which is a must for DV video editing. Otherwise its Radeon 9000 32MB (or 64MB) will easily handle video editing and other 2D content creation tasks.

The 700m does have a glossy screen, but I've heard the keyboard is a little cramped. The screen is on the small side of usability for net surfing and word processing, but for content creation it would serverly limit your work space. Also the standard battery lasts around or less than 2.5 hours which is low for a Pentium-M machine.

The 9100 would be slightly more powerful than the 8600, but you probably wouldn't notice it in most applications. It's also more of a desktop replacement rather than a mobile notebook, in addition the the size and weight of the 9100 itself, the power brick is fairly big.

 

[MIDIman]

Thanks guys - sounds like the 8600 is my best bet. I just priced it out to $1602 with everything I could possibly need.

 

[foolish501]

i'll sell u my 9100 for $1100 with an external dvd writer, and 80gb hard drive, pm me if u want the full specs

 

[imported_goku]

Hold up before you buy a laptop for media creation. Ok first off you said that your going to use the laptop for "Content Creation (Photoshop, Macromedia suite, some light video editing" well with my sister's laptop I noticed when using photoshop and other graphic editing program you will get horrific jaggy lines on your images like as if you have disabled Anti Alaising or something. I know ppl say that the cause of this is because of the DPI is but I have changed this and it doesn't correct the image distortion. This could either be caused by it's unstandard resolution, poor screen or a combination of the both. I am not sure about the 9100 but I do know for sure that the 700M/600M and below have this issue. Good luck with your shopping, if I were you since dell has been slacking, I would get either a VAIO (If your ok with thier proprietary software/hardware or get an IBM where you know everything should be good.

 

[MIDIman]

Thanks goku2100 - I'll keep it in mind. I've never seen that on a laptop before. Since the 8600 and 9100 have a different video chipets, maybe they won't have this issue? The 600/700m's are Intel EE chipsets. The content creation I mentioned will be quite basic, and will likely be verified via a good CRT before delivery. The IBM's are just too much unfortunately.

 

[imported_goku]

You can get a relatively/compairable IBM for about the same price. Like the basic model for a laptop with a Radeon 9600 is 1700$. So if you do plan on doing realtime encoding then the video card shouldn't matter because all the processing is done on the CPU. Tell me if anyone is listening, is there a way I can have premiere utilize my video card's processing power so it doesn't take so long to encode? I heard that it has hardware built in encoding on the Radeon 9800 Pro. Please clarify this for me because I'm a little sketchy on the issue.
Thanks!