Laptop Upgrade Odyssey almost complete

[bryanW1995]

so, I caved in a couple of weeks ago and ordered a laptop with my bonus bucks from my previous job. I had to compromise with the wifey and get her a surround sound system, leaving me with just 660 points for my laptop. my options were a couple of different hp/lenovo celeron/semprons or a turion x2 TL-56 with vista home premium and 1gb ram. I figured...what the heck, I can always buy more ram and this will keep the wife happy. I order the inspiron 1521 and everything seems good, right? I mean, a TL-56 isn't that great, but dell doesn't build until they order it so I figure that at least I'll get the 65nm version...well, after going to dell and researching the issue, I found out that they don't OFFER the 1521 any more. Not only that, but they redirected me to the 1525 page as the "replacement". well, the cheapest 1525 is a celeron 550...NO FREAKIN' WAY am I gonna settle for a single core celeron pos, I'd much rather have a TL-56. I fire off a few emails to the administration company and tell them my situation...they look into it and assure me that I'll get the TL-56 as agreed. I proceed to inform them that if I DON'T GET the TL-56, I want a comparable or better cpu. I list the next processor up in that 1525 chain, a T2370 pentium dual core. Realistically, that is a much better cpu than a TL-56, but it is dual core so I figure that it's worth arguing over. Besides, I REALLY don't want this computer if it's single core, I'd rather keep my A64 desktop replacement 3200+ if that's the case. They get the email, reassure me that everything is gonna be ok, and inform me that the shipping date has been moved up from 5/28 to 5/7. I leave them alone, temporarily placated.

The laptop arrived today. Did it have Vista Home Premium? check. Did it have 1gb of ram? check (drat). did it have a TL-56 cpu? no. was it a 1521? no, stupid, they don't make those any more! did it have a celery 550? no. T2370? huh, what's going on? did they bump me up to the T5550 just to be nice? no, of course not. they put a freakin' T7250 in it!!!! I now love dell very very much.

edit: for those of you keeping track at home, the T7250 is a true c2d cpu with 2mb cache and a full 200mhz fsb...it's basically a 35w e4400!!! so, should I be happy that I went from a turion x2 @ 1800mhz with a craptastic 1mb L2 to a c2d @ 2000mhz with 2mb L2? hmmm...maybe I should create a poll.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
so, I caved in a couple of weeks ago and ordered a laptop with my bonus bucks from my previous job. I had to compromise with the wifey and get her a surround sound system, leaving me with just 660 points for my laptop. my options were a couple of different hp/lenovo celeron/semprons or a turion x2 TL-56 with vista home premium and 1gb ram. I figured...what the heck, I can always buy more ram and this will keep the wife happy. I order the inspiron 1521 and everything seems good, right? I mean, a TL-56 isn't that great, but dell doesn't build until they order it so I figure that at least I'll get the 65nm version...well, after going to dell and researching the issue, I found out that they don't OFFER the 1521 any more. Not only that, but they redirected me to the 1525 page as the "replacement". well, the cheapest 1525 is a celeron 550...NO FREAKIN' WAY am I gonna settle for a single core celeron pos, I'd much rather have a TL-56. I fire off a few emails to the administration company and tell them my situation...they look into it and assure me that I'll get the TL-56 as agreed. I proceed to inform them that if I DON'T GET the TL-56, I want a comparable or better cpu. I list the next processor up in that 1525 chain, a T2370 pentium dual core. Realistically, that is a much better cpu than a TL-56, but it is dual core so I figure that it's worth arguing over. Besides, I REALLY don't want this computer if it's single core, I'd rather keep my A64 desktop replacement 3200+ if that's the case. They get the email, reassure me that everything is gonna be ok, and inform me that the shipping date has been moved up from 5/28 to 5/7. I leave them alone, temporarily placated.

The laptop arrived today. Did it have Vista Home Premium? check. Did it have 1gb of ram? check (drat). did it have a TL-56 cpu? no. was it a 1521? no, stupid, they don't make those any more! did it have a celery 550? no. T2370? huh, what's going on? did they bump me up to the T5550 just to be nice? no, of course not. they put a freakin' T7250 in it!!!! I now love dell very very much.

edit: for those of you keeping track at home, the T7250 is a true c2d cpu with 2mb cache and a full 200mhz fsb...it's basically a 35w e4400!!! so, should I be happy that I went from a turion x2 @ 1800mhz with a craptastic 1mb L2 to a c2d @ 2000mhz with 2mb L2? hmmm...maybe I should create a poll.

the cpu aside, the T7250 is a santa rosa chipset cpu. P965 socket P Merom.

If anything id be more happy about the planer board, forget the cpu.

So if you get bored and you want more you can drop a penryn mobile cpu on that and watch it fly. <--- this is where im trying to get at.

nice score bryan definitely something to be happy about.


also about the ram, who cares, even notebook ram is rediculously cheap right now.

 

[bryanW1995]

so, should I send mr dell flowers?? chocolate? let him drive a wrangler for a few months...

and yeah, I don't care about the ram.

funny thing is, on the inspiron 1525 page, it has a description of each computer. the one that I got IS the basic one with an 80gb hd, 1gb ram, and a black case. all of the others have a blue case, and all of the others except the next step up have 3gb ram (it also only has one). plus, all of the others have progressively larger hd's. All I need to do is wait until this hd wears out its welcome with the wifey and she starts running out of memory and I can spend a little bit to upgrade it...man, this thing should last a LONG time

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
so, should I send mr dell flowers?? chocolate? let him drive a wrangler for a few months...

and yeah, I don't care about the ram.

funny thing is, on the inspiron 1525 page, it has a description of each computer. the one that I got IS the basic one with an 80gb hd, 1gb ram, and a black case. all of the others have a blue case, and all of the others except the next step up have 3gb ram (it also only has one). plus, all of the others have progressively larger hd's. All I need to do is wait until this hd wears out its welcome with the wifey and she starts running out of memory and I can spend a little bit to upgrade it...man, this thing should last a LONG time

i cant stand stock.

My 8710p has had 2 processor swaps.

T7200 -> T7700 -> T9500


Also i find it very funny and annoying that my laptop runs hotter then my all my highly clocked Quads. :T

Bah i hate air cooling.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, my poor lappy is getting up to about 70c with seti running and that new optimized app that was released today. that's ok, it's got warranty...I think...

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Bah i hate air cooling

That would be why

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
yeah, my poor lappy is getting up to about 70c with seti running and that new optimized app that was released today. that's ok, it's got warranty...I think...

Did you go for the 3-4 year warranty? You will probably need it if you run it 24/7 laptops mobos don't seem to like it from my experience.

 

[bryanW1995]

i didnt pay for it. ill be happy if i even get the standard 1 year warranty. i might have to set cpu time to 60-70%...

 

[bryanW1995]

just did a little more research. this is the computer that I got:

http://configure.us.dell.com/d...s&l=en&cs=19&pg=review

admittedly, there's a pretty high price for office 2008 and the dvd +/- rw drive + roxio suite, but the web cam and 802.11.n card are kinda nice...

looks like it's a good thing I raised a ruckus about the cpu...