Going to grad school

I am going to purchase a Latitude D610 for grad school in a few days (require by school), I have a few question concerning the configuration and I know all of you guys are Dell experts. So here goes.

- Should I upgrade my processor to higher speed? (default is 1.73Ghz, I was thinking spend an extra 180 on 2 Ghz plus SXGA+ screen)

- I am going tu upgrade the memory after I get my latitude from dell (default 512, planning to upgrade to 1GB)

- Should I go for the integrated graphics solution or X300? 100 dollar differences for me (grad school price)

- Plan to upgrade from 40GB (5400) to 80 GB (5400) -> 50 dollar difference

- standard 3 yr limited warranty + 3 yr NBD warranty (default), should I upgrade to CompleteCare (3 years) for 150 dollars? Grad school advice me to get it.

I will be using this laptop for both grad and personal, so it will probably be use at least 5 days a week. Here are my task, word, excel, powerpoint for school. Personal: Visual Studio Development 2005, Flash, Photoshop, VMWare. (I multitask A LOT)Probably not too much gaming, but will watch movies or DVD on my laptop.

Please tell me what you guys think.

Btw, I need to make my purchase by Wed latest.

 

I would go with 2.0 GHz. Right now everything is changing over to dual core, but 2.0 will get you through for the next few years. It will also help with your multitasking.

1gb of RAM should be plenty. You can always upgrade the RAM at any point of your notebook's life.

I would probably go with 80gb. I know with my school, professors make most of our assignments typed or on some way related to the computer. Plus you'll have extra room for music, photos, etc.

Complete care really just depends on you. I have accidental coverage which is the same as complete care, but i'm clumsy. I always eat/drink around my computer, so for security measures, I did get it. It will cover any spills, drops, general breakage, etc but doesn't cover fire damage or stealing.

SG

 

SG, thanks for the reply...

should I go with the X300 or integrated graphics? it's 100 dollars different, and for overall system performance, isn't the X300 better as well because it doesn't take the system bandwidth?

Also, I have a 600M on hand right now, do the latitude use the same material for it's outer shell?

The only reason I am thinking of complete care is because it only cost 150 instead of 300. Let's say I don't get that, but still have the 3 yr warranty, what would happen if I drop my laptop one day and the LCD stop working? would they replace it? since the LCD is under warranty.

One last thing, is it important to invest in SXGA+ instead of XGA?

Thanks

 

One more thing, will the X300 help out if I were to do Video Editing? I user Adobe Premiere most of the time.

 

I would probably go with the X300 card just because of the nature of the programs that you have, you are going to want the better card. It should support most of your programs that you want.

The latitudes are built better than the inspirons, so it won't be the same material. The latitudes are more durable and can handle being taken everyday to work/school/trips where as the Inspirons weren't really made for everyday traveling.

As for the screen, I would probably go with the SXGA+. Your resolution is going to be higher, so icons will be smaller. I don't think there is an actual major quality difference like matte vs. glossy. With SXGA+, you'll be able to see more of your application -- like if you were using an excel spreadsheet. With SXGA+ you'll see more rows/columns vs what you would see on XGA.

I'm not 100% sure on the warranty question. Warranties are a bit tricky. Dell's standard warranty is very limited. It only covers hardware problems that are caused by your orginial hardware or by dell. Any parts that you upgrade after your purchase will not be covered in your warranty, so if dell is able to determine that the memory you bought after purchased cause problems, they won't fix it. Now if they deteremine that it was something else in the hardware then it would be covered.

With your LCD question, it kind of relates back to what i was saying about the memory. If dell determines that the problem with the LCD was caused by you, then it won't be covered under the standard warranty. If Dell looks at it and decides that it was not related to the fall, then Dell would replace or fix it without charging you.

Hope that helps,
SG

 

Since you won't start until August, you might want to put off the purchase until the end of the semester. You'll get more machine for your money. Get it during the summer so that you'll get rid of the new-toy obsession and work out the kinks of using it, etc.

Congratulations.

 

Actually.. I am starting school in a month... and the orientation is in 2 weeks .. (where I will need my laptop)

My hesitation on the X300 is that it sucks more battery than Integrated Graphics.. and I don't play games.. don't want to waste 100 dollar on things I don't need, and I read from other post that the X300 doesn't help on stuff like Photoshop and Flash.

 

I checked out the X300 card on dell, and it doesn't reduce your battery life by very much. With a 6 cell battery, you'll get around 4.7 hours battery life with the integrated graphics. With the x300 card, you'll get 4.5.

Here is more info on it if you need it:
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/pro...&s=bsd&~lt=popup&~page=2&~tab=specstab#tabtop

I thought the X300 card would be better for Visual Studio, but it might give the same results as the integrated card. The integrated would work good for your daily tasks.