dell laptop comparison
 

i customized two notebooks on dells site - the Inspiron 710m and the XPS M140
prices:
m140: $1522
710m: 2157 - 733 (30%+ sale) = $1423

and i customized them to be pretty much the same as far as components:
BOTH - Intel® Pentium® M Processor 755 (2.0GHz)
M140 - 1GB Shared DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms
710m - 1GB DDR SDRAM 2 Dimms
BOTH - 100 GB HD
BOTH - DVD burner
BOTH - Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless (802.11 b/g, 54Mbps)
M140 - bluetooth wireless

so essentially the differences are the screen sizes, the RAM, and the M140 has bluetooth wireless...

what i dont understand is why the 710m is so much more expensive maybe because its a newer model and more compact?

and on the eighth of april, dell is supposed to have a sale on mobile gaming, so maybe the M140 will be even cheaper...

some links to see the prices yourself:
M140 710m

but anyway whats the better deal?

**another question, would there be much performance increase in a dual core Inspiron E1705?

The 710m is probably more expensive simply because its smaller and thus its parts are smaller and yet the same power. You get the picture for that.

As for a speed increase with dual core, only if applications are optimized for it. As of now, few are, so you won't really notice the speed increase much. It's good future proofing, but its still not entirely necessary yet.


As for better deal, depends. The 710m is more expensive but smaller, whereas the M140 is slightly larger and cheaper. I'd go with the M140 because I just can't work for extended periods of time on a 12 inch screen. Whatever fits your needs though.

thanks for a quick response, i've pretty much ruled out the 710m now, because 12 inches is small and thats not what i want to pay for really...

so now ive just got to decide on the M140 or the Inspiron E1705, which again are roughly the same price, and the Inspiron being a little better in components

i guess its just a battle between the sizes of the laptops

I wouldn't get the E1705. It's 17" screen makes it too large to be partially portable. I got a similar computer, its 15" although lives in the same category of desktop replacements, and trust me, never again am I going that route.

I'd recommend the 14", decent screen size, great portability, and tolerable battery life.

I assume you are a college student trying to get this, or even if you're in business, mobility is a great thing. If you need gaming, I'd say make this computer a cheaper mobile one and buy a souped up desktop. Gets you the best of both worlds.

yeah i already got a desktop that can handle most of the recent games, ie ive played fear and WoW on it, so it's fine for games, im mostly wanting a laptop for portability, and yeah ill be trasnferring to a major university in the fall, and im a computer science major, so i need a computer with me at all times ;)

thanks for the feedback, really has helped me

Well, if your interest is portability and you've already got a desktop for games, why are you even considering anything larger than 12"? If you're after portability, go with the smallest thing you can afford that still maintains the level of functionality you need to have on the road. If you're going to be using it mainly for notetaking/web-browsing and that sort of thing, I don't see where anything over 12" is even necessary. Trust me, if you're going to be carrying it everywhere, every inch and pound you can shed is one your back will thank you for later.

I just bought the Inspiron 710m for $800 through Dell (with tax + shipping and upgrades another $100). My friend has the 700m and I love that size. I'm looking for something small, cute, portable and powerful enough to use photoshop and possibly play FFXI from time to time ;) I upgraded the HD for $35 so the total was about $900.

I think I got it during a one day sale though. Dell is doing really badly this quarter so keep watching those prices, they are desperate to close out a good quarter so they will continue to do discounting.

Dell's XPS line of notebooks are generally much more expensive than need be. And as it has been said, if you already have a desktop for gaming, and this is for portability, 15.4" is about as large as you should go, and that's pushing it. 12" to 14" is a good size.

i'll really take that into consideration, its just that i do want to do a little more than just word-processing/webbrowsing, ill be watching video, viewing pics, doing some photoshop, etc. so i'll need a little bit of power, i just have to decide if i want to be doing all that on a little 12 inch screen...
and im going to buy from dell, so its down to the 710m and the xps m140, and from reviews i've read the xps is so much better when it comes to specs, the 710 is just a smaller screen (but only buy 2 inches and it has older components)
the 710m is 34% off for 2 more days (i can get a $2200 for $1500), the XPS is 10% of two more days, so thats how long i have to decide...

tomorrow ill be at best buy playing with laptops ;)

What I want to know is why the Inspiron series has Core Duo chips while the XPS series, which is supposed to be more advancesd, does not. I'm looking for a multipurpose laptop. I'm considering pursuing a computer science major and I'm also a game addict so I'll want something that can handle 3D modelling, gaming, Photoshop, general entertainment, and mundane work. Size is not an issue for me because I know I want a 17-incher and I really am not bothered by carrying big, heavy stuff. So I thought an XPS would fit the bill but then I noticed it doesn't have dual-core processors like the Inspirons. So now I'm confused. Shouldn't a gaming laptop have a dual-core chip? The Core Duo chips also have a faster FSB. Why aren't they in XPS machnes?

They'd be doing better if they'd damn ship the five laptops that I ordered two weeks ago.

As for your question as to why the XPS systems don't have dual core processors, it is just because they haven't released the next model of that line, I am sure. The Latitude line JUST two weeks ago released their new models that included the dual core processors {the day before I ordered five of them}, so I would fully expect the XPS to follow suit within the next month or so.

just ordered the dell xps m140
i dont have the patience to wait for a dual core xps ;)

Well guess what, buddy, the new dual core XPS just came out. However, it is expensive. Just for fun, I configured an XPS M1710 to the max with stuff like 4 gigs of DDR SDRAM at 667MHz and a 2.26GHz Core Duo at 667MHz bus, etc. It costs over $6,500. Dual core is nice, but it's retardulously expensive. The cheapest M1710 laptop is $2,600, mostly because the processor is now dual core (the cheapest is a Core Duo T2400 with a 2MB cach and 667MHz bus) and the only video card available is the new Geforce 7900. You can pay big bucks for the 512MB version.

What really iffs me is that I had configured a laptop before they upgraded the M170 line to M1710 that cost $2,400 and was loaded. Sure, it wasn't dual core and the video card was a 7800 but it's probably not too much of a difference between what I had configured and the entry-level M1710. Dell should offer some more flexibility with customization. For example, why can't you put a real video card (the only option I had was integrated Intel) in the M140 and yet you can put in 2 gigs of RAM? What if I want to buy an M1710 but I don't want to pay for the latest and greatest and I'll settle for a Pentium M and a GeForce 7800 GTX (which seems to be more powerful than the 7900GS)? Why does it cost $400 to upgrade your video card from the 7900GS (which, as I mentioned based on Nvidia's specs, seems to be less powerful than the 7800GTX. WTF?), which will push the price to 3 grand? Dell might think they'll get more money by limiting your choices and forcing you to pay more but I'll bet they'll get more sales if they give customers more options. Dell might be the best, but they cost too much now. I'm looking elsewhere, like WidowPC.

yeah its a good thing they didn't release a duo core for the m140, or i would have been really mad

and yeah i was a little upset on the limitations of the vidcard in the m140, but im not much of a gamer, so its all ok

also, yeah dell is expensive, when there are no rebates, find some coupons online, theres almost always some out, when i was buying my m140, the inspirion 170m was over 34% off,

dell is known to be expensive, but also known to have some really good deals