Got a great Dell deal, but I have a question

Ok, here is my SWEET system.

Studio XPS 13-1340
Highlights:
Obsidian Black with Leather Accent edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8700 (3MB cache/2.53GHz/1066Mhz FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-bit
HD DISPLAY Edge-to-Edge 13.3" HD WXGA Slim WLED LCD with 1.3 Megapixel Camera
MEMORY 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1067MHz (2 Dimms)
HARD DRIVE 128GB Solid State Drive
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE 8X CD/DVD Burner + Roxio Creator 10 Premier - Ultimate Burn/Authoring
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA® GeForce® 9500M - 256MB
WIRELESS CARDS Dell Wireless 1510 802.11n Half Mini-Card
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0
BLUETOOTH Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module (2.1+EDR)

Total AC $775.20




My question: What are the advantages and disadvantages for solid state drives? My friend told me to jump on this system and he is not answering my text about the solid state drive. Thanks

 

Con: price
Pro: Everything

 

that really is a smokin deal, but i woulda paid the $25-50 for the better graphics card.

 

used laptop? you can get it for $775 only?
a new system with same specs can sell for around $1250 on ebay.
configuration is great, 128gb samsung ssd is good, but not really better than 7200 rpm hard drive.

 

128gb samsung ssd is much better then a 7200rpm hdd....

the almost zero access times blow away disc hdds any day.

 

Well, let see...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

Obviously you aren't doing 24SSD on raid but you are still getting 200MBs ~ read/write over the 80-20MBs~ on a 7200RPM hard drive

 

To answer your question the 128gb ssd will smoke the 500gb 7200rpm. This is a smokin deal almost as good as mine ) only problem is that you will need an external hd, but just buy one with e-sata and you are good to go.

I did say "no" the the i7 wait because of today's outlet coupon. I was planning to save abd buy one. But I realized i needed a pc now andnot in novemebr. it makes me save a bunch of money and it got me a key for a windows 7 ultimate not too shabby.


Studio XPS 16-1640
Highlights:
Obsidian Black with Leather Accent edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8800 (3MB cache/2.66GHz/1066Mhz FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate SP1, 64-bit
HD DISPLAY 16" HD RGBLED LCD with 2 Megapixel Camera
MEMORY 6GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1067MHz (2 Dimms)
HARD DRIVE 500GB 7200rpm
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE 8X CD/DVD Burner + Roxio Creator 10 Premier - Ultimate Burn/Authoring
VIDEO CARD ATI 4670 - 1GB
WIRELESS CARDS Intel 5300 a/g/n Half Mini-Card
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0
BLUETOOTH Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module (2.1+EDR)

Total AC $756 + Taxes

 

couldnt upgrade as this wasnt a custom built system. It is from the Dell outlet and I had a 20% off coupon. The price was actually $50 cheaper as someone gave me a Dell gift card. So one guy said the 7200rpm is better and one guy said it isnt. Im still confused and I have no knowledge of SSD until today. Thanks for the understanding guys

 

I have a brand new 500gb external drive that I can use, but I also have a desktop with all of my downloads, itunes, etc... Your deal is awesome too, but the 13" size is pretty important to me. Congrats on your new baby!

 

I have the 256 gb Samsung SSD and it screams atleast twice as fast as a 7200 RPM drive restart time in vista on a10 bios was 32 secs!!

 

Are you kidding ? The above configuration is of $756 USD ??? Link please ...

 

It is the dell outlet, but you need a coupon for 20% off. There are some out there (slickdeals.net) and some on ebay for like $1.99 (worth it since my coupon saved me a little over $190).

Dell Outlet

 

I my pants when I saw that price.

 

Congrats on your buy.

From what little I've read about SSDs, they are faster and use less power than conventional mechanical drives. There are some considerations to take into account though...like not to defrag these drives (shut off auto defragging in Vista) as these drives have a limited number of write cycles

check out page 3 and 5 of this OCZ SSD review... http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-vertex-turbo-ssd-review-test/1

 

The specs are great. Don't worry about the SSD 'cause their lifespan is long. It's also said that sometimes SSDs isn't faster as HDD in the long run especially lower end SSDs. The main advantages are faster read and write. Battery saving wise there's no significant difference. Heat will also be generated since the chips are being used for access. It's not recommended to defrag but once you have all your programs installed it's said that it's beneficial to defrag once. I just installed an 128gb SSD on my netbook and a tablet pc. Dell also sells SSD for a bargain.. 256gb for $479. I wanna replace my XPS m1530 with one but then again Western Digital is coming out with a 52000rpm 1tb laptop HDD for cheap. Decisions decisions.

 

Its a great deal that you saved some alot of money buy buying off the Outlet, but its not so great when you consider that the SXPS 13 is a fail machine.

 

I would disagree with that, even if i sold it to get a xps 16 (received this am, i love free overnight, cant wait to get out of work). the xps 13 was a great pc with a few drawbacks that all have been fixed with the last Bios I had installed. To go in your way, I still believe that the 9500m was the biggest problem and the root cause for many other issues on this machine. Dell is now proposing an alternative with a new video card.

 

I'm not talking about just the heat and low gaming power... but the fact that the machine weighs 4.9 lbs (on a 13 incher, that is ridiculous), charges over $100 just for an LED screen without any higher resolution, doesn't get very good battery life, and then add in the fact that is just really high priced- starting at $1000 where more powerful 13 inchers like the Sony Vaio SR come in cheaper with more performance.

Its just a fail machine unless you want something that looks nice.

 

Really? Slower RAM speed, ExpressCard 34 (not 54), no eSATA, no DisplayPort, and maybe Intel VT support if you hack the BIOS or Sony gets around to "giving" it to you? Not really a comparison. I just built one and got a more power hungry CPU (not the P series) with similar speed and cache, and missing everything else, and it came in at $50 cheaper. Hmmm...

 

I have heard that the TRIM feature in WIN 7 will enable the SSD to last longer, but that Samsung drives need a firmware update. I also read that most Samsung drives will never be able to accept the firmware update.

Also, my mom has had 2 Sony machines and both were crap. They over heated and one would flicker on and off.

 

RAM speed makes NO performance difference. DDR2 is the exact same in performance as DDR3. People who think its 'better' don't know what they're talking about.

The Vaio SR has HDMI... as long as you have either HDMI or Displayport, you can buy a cheap $10 adapter to the other.

Expresscard 34 instead of 54? Eh. Tell me how many people can even tell you what you put inside a PCI-E slot.

Virtualisation support isn't there, but if this person isn't running VM software (which I doubt they are) its not a big deal.

Again, eSata isn't a must... most people don't have anything to use with it except maybe a phone charger.

$50 cheaper, but a twice as powerful graphics card.

 

My friend had a couple Dell machines that were crap. Dell must suck, huh? I'm never buying one of their machines... oh, wait...


The TRIM feature is definitely something worth waiting for, I recommend either putting off spending money on a SSD for a while, or getting an OCZ Agility (solid Indilinix drive for a good price).

If it comes with a Samsung, thats not going to kill you because its still a very cheap price for a very fast out of the box drive. I would recommend replacing it eventually with a better one, but for at least a year or two you should be fine, and thats plenty time to save up enough for a new one.

 

For me, all of those things make the difference. So your post on how much this laptop sux in comparison to the Sony is way off the mark. And yes, memory speed makes a huge difference when you spend your time virtualizing 4-8 instances of Windows and Linux. People buy systems for a variety of reasons, so your generalization is "teh failsauce."

 

1) DDR2 vs DDR3 debate isn't worth getting into, but you're wrong to say that it offers no advantages. That's all I'll say.

2)No virtualization? hmmm http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=37006

Where are you getting your "facts" at?

EDIT, re: #2 i thought he was indicating that the P8700/8800 didn't have virtualization.

 

The 'advantages' of DDR3 are all on paper. Give someone the same machine with different RAM and they can't tell a single difference. And thats all that matters.

The processor supports virtualization, but Sony has disabled it in the BIOS. Newer machines are promising to have it enabled though.

 

Thanks for your advice. It is coming with the SSD drive, and I think I will get a better one in the future.

As for the Sony comment, in my experience, Dell has much better customer service than Sony. I havent known any of my Dell owning friends to have serious issues, and I guess that is the way consumer recommendations work. Some people have friends that have mac issues, so they dont buy one. Its all about circumstance and coincidence.

 

An i7 with DDR3 should take advantage of the new features of DDR3 better then a P8800 would. We can agree that in most cases, day to day tasks are not going to show a large difference, but DDR3 is still going to be a better, and ultimately faster kit to have installed.