Just ordered an inspiron 1505 core duo 2

Hey everyone just ordered my first laptop, this will be my second dell, im giving my dimension 8400 to my parents. I've read great reviews on this laptop and loved it when I saw it at the dell kiosk at my local mall. It will be my college laptop in a year and will be used primarily for music and word processing and possibly a little light gaming

heres the specs

-Inspiron E1505 Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5200 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
-LCD Panel 15.4 inch Wide Screen WXGA+ Display with TrueLife™
-Memory 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
-Video Card 256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory™
-Hard Drive 80GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
-Operating System (Office software not included) FREE Upgrade to Windows
-Vista Home Premium + Belkin Easy Transfer Cable
-Network Card and Modem Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
-Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 7.0
-Combo or DVD+RW Drive 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
-Sound Options Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™HD Software Edition
-Wireless Networking Cards Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N
-Primary Battery 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

Not much of a computer wiz but have been researching the last couple weeks and read here so i think it looks alright.

Just a couple quick questions

Is vista really as bad as some reviews make it out to be, seemed fine trying it out when i was trying different laptops?

Is 1gb memory enough?

Should I have waited for this intel santa rosa (don't know much about it)

Input is greatly appreciated

 

Great choice for college!

If you're going to use it mostly in your dorm room then you could probably skimp on the 9 cell battery and save a bit more.

 

well i was thinking about waiting for the santa rosa platform but...then i realized that it wasnt worth waiting for...atleast in my opinion and most likely it will cost more. as for your question about 1 GB of RAM it depends on what you plan to do. and vista as of now....its buggy but im pretty sure it will get better as time goes on. really hope you enjoy your laptop....i love mines.

 

I don't think Vista is as bad as people say, no...I think it's actually much worse that what people are saying.

 

ROFL! .............

 

LOL it is pretty bad

 

but it will improve with service packs or something of the nature right?

 

heh

I gotta laugh at all the differing opinions.

I'll add mine....I have the same specs as you, wes, and Ultimate runs fine for me...No major problems at all; the minor have been few and far between. I happen to prefer Vista to XP.

 

vista is a disaster

 

heh, i actually quite like vista no problems here at all, i think its given bad press...

as of 1gb, that should be enough, but maybe add another 1gb in the near future

 

No it is not.
Sure it can be annoying at times, has few driver issues, gaming performance is not the best and even an experience windows XP user may need some time to get used to it. But give it some time, Vista will dominate the market pretty soon, and all those issues will be ironed out with a service pack. Despite all those things I said above, Vista is a very stable and usable operating System. If gaming is not a priority then it will serve you well.

1GB is enough to run Vista and most standard applications without experiencing any major performance issues, but 2GB is highly recommended. You can always upgrade it later, and usually that is cheaper than ordering it from DELL.

Santa Rosa is already out (DELL latitude series), several other manufacturers have even already stared shipping it out. The new processor is not a big improvement over Core 2 Duo, however DX10 graphics cards may turn out to be a worthwhile upgrade. But it all comes down to the price, if you got a very good deal on your inspiron (with recent discounts) then I wouldn’t worry about it. It has enough power to last several years, so enjoy your new notebook

 

Vista is ok if all you do is surf the net, or check emails. And my problem with Vista is that it is not compatible with any of my company financial software, it can't even pull the application using remote access or install it. I am not upgrading to vista AGAIN until Microsoft release the SP.

 

Vista is a horror for me, I had to load XP back. I think for simple systems you really do not have a worry, but for high end systems, the driver issue is big, well at least for me.

On another note, where I work we have 220 computers in our network, and not one of them has Vista, because the majority of our software, never mind if it is compatible, is simply not supported by the software companies. And with all the updates we get for our software, especially phone system software, Vista is a no go zone.

Other than Microsoft, I have yet to hear a major company or corporation endorse Vista.

 

Ok, I see that some of you guys are having trouble with Vista. But mostly because you are using non standard, old or tailor made applications with very little support. But for popular applications with a large customer base, running Vista is not that much of a problem.

I am a university student, and I run a couple of development environments, web/application servers and a database on my notebook in addition to normal stuff like media players, word, PowerPoint etc.. Therefore I most certainly do more than just internet browsing and e-mail checking. Besides, the person who started this thread is looking for a notebook for college work. He/she specifically said :

For him/her I see no reason why Vista shouldn't work.

 

Yeah, i do agree most of the applications i am running are still 32bits and were wrote back in 1990's lol... probably why Vista can't support it. but yeah, if wesf23 is using it for music and typing up some papers. i believe Vista should be fine.