Interested in a new laptop......

[sjvlad]

Hey all, so I'm wanting to get a laptop to replace my very old, very slow one I currently have. I have a powerful desktop that will be my everyday guy, and a SFF Shuttle that I can take with me if I'm going somewhere for multiple days. I'd like a laptop to have on my desk that I can use at the same time as my main computer and that I can take with me to work/school/other places for just the day.

I'm currently debating between two different Dells:
e1505s3
Intel Dual Core 1.83 GHz
1GB Ram
15.4" Ultrasharp widescreen
60GB 7200 rpm HDD
256MB GF Go 7300

or
e1705s3
Intel Dual Core 2GHz
1GB Ram
17" Ultrasharp widescreen
60GB 7200 rpm HDD
256 MB GF 7900 GS

after tax and shipping the 17" would be about $1650 and the 15" would be about $1100. I will only be doing a little bit of gaming on this, and mainly World of Warcraft at that (I'm addicted, sadly) so I think the 7300 would be up to that task. My question would be is it worth it to spend another almost 600 bucks for a bigger screen that would take up desk space?

Thanks for any help

 

[GimpyFuzznut]

I would avoid the 17 inch for a few of reasons;

1) It will be huge and difficult to lug around if you want to use it for everyday purposes like you said. 17 inch laptops (not really comfortable for the laps even) are meant to be desktop replacements.

2) Increasing the screen size means decreasing the battery life. If you want to be mobile, the 17 inch is going to hurt your battery life. You could always carry an extra battery, but carrying an extra battery on top of the extra weight of the notebook already is not going to be fun.

3) I'm going to assume the 17 inch will also have a greater native resolution - paired with a mobile card - higher resolution means slower gaming. Obviously you don't have to run games in the native resolution, but you could be getting weird looking gaming if you don't (personally I can't stand stretched text and other effects of improper resolution settings).

Whoops - just saw that the 17 inch model was configured with a 7900 GS. Well in that case, you won't have any problems running WoW maxed out at native resolution, you are just going to have a problem with extremely poor battery life. From what I've read here, somewhere in the range of an hour. Apparently the 7900 GS is a very, very power hungry card.

 

[Brainonska511]

Don't get the 7300 Go. Get the MR X1400 since it is a much better performer.

 

[HamSupLo]

how about an asus w2j or w3j?

 

[sjvlad]

Ok, I went with the e1505 with the X1400. After a bit of research I found out the ATI card kicks the heck out of NVidia's, which is really sad considering Dell charges 30 bucks more for the 7300. Thank you guys for your help and recomendations. 🙂