Inspiron 1720 - Yay or Nay?

Hi all,

I'm currently in the market for a laptop, and after much deliberation, hair pulling, flipflopping of decisions, have pretty much decided on the Inspiron 1720.

I've done a (Admittedly slack) Google to try and find any glaring problems with the 1720 series, but haven't found any, thankfully(ish).

So my first question: Are there any fairly constant problems with the 1720 (ie ones that seem to happen to most buyers of this machine, not "1 out of a million")?

Spec-wise, I plan on getting it outfitted with:
T7500 @ 2.2GHz
1920x1200 WUXGA
2GB RAM
250GB HDD + 160GB HDD
Dell Bluetooth module

Would I notice a performance boost if down the path I changed the RAM to DDR3? Or would increasing the amount be good enough?

Video encoding/gameplay-wise, which would see a better performance increase: increasing the amount of RAM, or getting the T7700 @ 2.4GHz processor?

Is there any real noticable difference between the basic Intel wireless card (802.11a/g spec) and the 4965AGN Wireless-N card?

One last one - Are the WinXP drivers easy to find for this machine?

Words alone cannot express how excited I am to be getting so close to getting my hands on a 17" lappy

Thanks for reading

 

i'll get mines tomorrow. i'll post some pics and stuff.

 

Okay, 17" is the best way to go, frankly better heat dissipation, and upgrade possibilities down the road. when the mobile 8800 is released, the likely hood of Dell shoving it into they're systems is very high, and it'll be almost a clean swap.

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As far as the CPU goes, I'd get a T7300 - 2.0Ghz and just over clock the hell out of it. When quad core comes out, if it's still the same socket you can likely just buy a chip and pop it in. Theoretically.

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DDR3 ram, is frankly.. REALLY bad ram, it's got terrible timing, then the bus is overclocked to hell to compensate for the terrible timing. Memory with good timing is more costly, that's why they just overclock the hell out of it, cheaper, easier. Memory with great timing WILL be faster. There is a argument that clock speed is more important then timing but after many reviews of benchmarks, timing seems to have a tiny advantage over speed. Usually the slowest ram has the best timing, the lower the latency digits the better.

Plus I doubt it supports DDR3..

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For the wireless card, yea theres a big difference between A and G compared to N - N is faster considerably. But all you're hardware has to be N to see the difference. I'd try and get a card that supports all the protocols.

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But yeah the laptop is great, a mate of mine has one, it's a beast. I donno how he manages with that big screen, even harder to believe how some people manage with these 20" screen laptops.

Good luck.