Inspiron 6400

I should be getting my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop in the mail in day or so. The specs the guy game me are:

1.6 ghz
4GB
80 GB hard drive,
15.4" screen
224 mb graphic card
Cd burner
Dvd player
Windows Vista Home Premium edition

I was told it had an intel pentium dual core.

My questions are:

These specs dont match up to the review I was reading on here http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3089&review=Dell+Inspiron+6400 Why?

Is an intel pentium dual core any good? In the review I was reading, he had a core 2 duo.

He also had Windows XP, and the one I am getting has vista.

 

I'd be surprised if you got one with the exact same specs as the one in the review...

I think the Pentium Dual Core refers to chips based on the Yonah architecture, aka the older Core Duo chips. for the most part these should more than enough for day to day use.

The reviewer had a T2400 Core Duo, so this is consistent.

You can always uninstall Vista and load XP if you want.

 

try to get a 64bit version of windows. otherwise your wasting 1.5GB's of ram.

Oh, and i had a 6400 and loved it. it was a great laptop and i plan on getting my GF one for x-mas. I hope you enjoy it.

 

Intel Core Duo is ok for most tasks, main difference between the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo is 64bit support. In addition, performance of Core 2 is around 10~15% better even at the same clock speed, cache memory , bus speed and power efficiency are also among some of the notable improvements. Take a look at this for a better comparison.

The review you linked has a Core Duo therefore it would perform similar for CPU related tasks, but without knowing the exact graphics card, cant say anything about graphics performance. The amount of video memory has has very little effect compared to the GPU. If its the integrated intel card, then its no good for any kind of gaming, X1400 was the best card shipped with that model.

 

Ohhh I was confused cause I thought that I had the best options that you could get with the laptop. But yeah I would perfer the core 2 duo, but I guess the pentium will work fine. I only want to use it for surfing the web, music, videos. And maybe CS:S.

This is my first own computer. I have been using a peice of junk dell desktop 4550. Some specs are:

Processor - Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40 GHz
512mb RAM
XP Home edition (5.1, build 2600)
NVIDIA Geforce4 MX 420

So this should be quit an upgrade.