M20 vs D610 refurbs

ok both are gonna be refurbs. im leaning towards the M20 b/c they seem to be cheaper and theres a ton of them in dell outlet

only thing is that i havent really heard alot about them so i just got a couple questions.

1)whats the main difference between the M20 and D610? same quality build wise?

2)any heat issues? what about the speaker issue i seem to be reading about in D610? are they also present in the M20?

3)what is the average battery life for the M20 w/ the 6 cell battery? i dont know if they come in any other size but i want the 14.1" SXGA+ (i heard screen size matters). hopefully with that it can still be atleast 3+hrs.

4)one of the biggest diff. i found between the M20 and D610 is the GPU. ATI FileGL 64MB vs X300. which is better? do the X300 come with 64MB also?

5)the refurb M20 does not come with wireless and BT. does it also not come with the ethernet/RJ-45 port or is this suppose to be standard?

6)the M20 has "8x DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability". i dont really know what that means but i know i dont really need to write to DVD's. does that affect the speed of CD-RW at all? id rather have a faster read/write speed to CD than be able to write to DVD's

 

Personally would stay away from refurbed as they tend to come with short warranties. If something were to break, it will be expensive to fix.

 

If you have a good warranty, then refurb will be fine.
The M20 is a D610 with a CAD-optimized version of the X300 gpu. i.e. emphasis is not on speed but on accuracy of screen draws and stability. ie. it will be slghtly slower for games but much better for CAD etc.
Ethernet is standard. Both the D610 and its close sister the M20 have the fabulous keyboard and build quality of their bigger sisters the D810 and the M70.
There's a review of the M20 here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=16961.

 

as far i can tell those dell refurbs come with the same warranty as the new ones...so 3 years warranty on the latitude and precision. i would like to get a new one but i cant spec one that would be under $1200. and im not getting a lattitude. best i can get with a new dell is somewhere around $1300+ and if thats the case, im better off getting a t42/t43 for only like $200 more.

yeah i've read that review. was wondering if anyone else has an opinion on it.

oh and i just found out those refurbs M20 does not come with a modem. thats not so good as we still have dial-up at my parents house. anyone know if its possible to add a modem yourself? and is it hard?