Help!? About to order inspiron, need advice

A few burning questions:

17" or 15" ? I've heard Inspirons are generally kind of heavier, thicker, and bulkier than other systems. Is this true? Is it significant? If so, I think I'd rather go with 15"

Is there anywhere I can go (retail stores?) to physically see what Dells feel like?

Any difference between Intel 4965 wireless-N and Dell 1505 wireless-N cards?

Glossy display or anti-glare?

Intel C2D T7500 2.2GHz, 4 MB cache or T7250 2.0GHz, 2MB cache?

Vista or XP?


Any input is much appreciated.

 

I just got the 1721 Inspiron and it is definitely a solid chunk of machine. I don't imagine I'll be carrying it around much though except at home so its size has been fine. If you want it really portable get the 15. I am in Madison, WI and we have a Dell kiosk at the mall. Maybe check your area to see if you have one too. i think it is fairly new. I came from XP and so far am happy with Vista but am really not very well versed in all it can do. I am doing a lot of reading here and I was very happy with XP but I am sure I will be with Vista as well. My new notebook has so much more memory and it is a faster processor, I can't really say whether it is the OS or not because it was all an improvement. I have the glossy screen and it seems fine. I have the one(AUO) that seems to be in question a lot but I can't really tell so it must be ok. I have the Dell 1505 wireless N card and can't compare since it is my first time with wireless but it seems to be fine. I got a Dlink wireless N router that is backwards compatible w/tivo and all is working fine. No outages as such. Good luck I am sure you will be happy with either Inspiron.
steph

 

There is some kind of dell kiosk in a mall in maryland , i have been there this summer and it was pretty disappointing , still u could at least touch and see the notebooks there in real life !

*edit* oh and get the cheaper cpu , the videocard will be the bottleneck anyways not the cpu!

and I got a anti-glare display and i love it , u should choose w/e u prefer though.

 

Go with the 15 inch.

Find a Dell kiosk near you.

No difference really between the two wireless cards. The Intel may be more reliable...

Glossy display.

2.2 ghz processor.

Vista Home Premium.

 

The 17" weighs 7.62 pounds
Width: 15.5" (39.4cm)
Height: 1.5" (3.9cm) front - 1.7" (4.4cm) back
Depth: 11.5" (29.3cm)

The 15" weighs 6.4 pounds
Width: 14.12" (35.8cm)
Height: 1.47" (3.7cm) front - 1.65" (4.5cm) back
Depth: 10.59" (26.9cm)

Look for a Dell kiosk in your area. Check the phone book.

If you're going to want to tinker with Linux, get the Intel card.

This is mostly a personal preference. If you're going to be working in a brightly lit area most of the time, you might consider the anti-glare. The glossy is said to have better contrast though.

I'd get the T7500 with the 4 MB cache.
Whether you'd notice the difference in speed really depends on what you want to do with the laptop though.

Given the choice, I'd take XP just to be sure of compatibility with the programs I usually use. But if this is not a work computer that absolutely has to be compatible with certain programs, or you know the programs you use are Vista-compatible, then you might consider Vista. If you play games, Vista has DirectX 10 support while XP does not, but XP seems to produce higher benchmark scores (though not always by much).