M60, XPS, or 9100

I have a budget of about 6K. I plan on getting the best Dell notebook available primarily for business apps, photo edit, and video editing. Whichever laptop I get, it will be a 7200rpm 60 gig with extra hardrive and completely maxed out specs (although I will get min load memory and by sep from Crucial).

question is this: with my budget, and knowing whichever notebook I get will be more than enough for me, can someone give feedback/advice as to which notebook is "best" for my common business uses, editing as described above, as well as some gaming??
Is a 1.7 mobile processor on the m60 truly as fast as they say??

THanks!!

 

Hi Joseph,

Good luck with buying you're machine, with a 6K budget you're gonna get something really killer!! But if you can spend that much, I think there are other laptop brands than Dell that might be much better... (e.g. IBM) Check them out before you make you're decision finally.

I have an I8600, but was strongly considering the M60 over it. I didn't in the end because the M60 is twice the price of the 8600, and the graphics card is not as good for DX9. Performance wise, an XPS or 9100 (they are both almost the same) will be much faster than the M60 for two reasons; 1) the 3GHz chip with faster 800MHz bus (the PM 1.7 has only a 400MHz bus) and 2) the ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card which is much better than the nVidia FX1000. However, the PM 1.7 is still really quite fast, and when they say it is equivalent to a 2.7Ghz chip, in my experience this is about right.

The FX1000 nVidia card in the M60 is the same chip as the nVidea 5650, but has extended architecture to support fast OpenGL graphics. However, although the Radeon 9600 is not as fast for OpenGL, it is WAAAY faster for DX9 (i.e. for the latest games). Also, some people say that even the normal 2D image quality with the nVidia card looks washed out compared to the ATI 9600 (but I've never compared the two myself to say so authoritively).

Now, the M60 has basically the same specs as the fully loaded 8600 (which I have), but in addition it is built like a truck!! It has an all metal construction, which means it will be very robust. It is also relatively light for its specs (about 3kg). In addition, it has fantastic battery life (about 4.5 hrs), and very low heat dissipation.

In contrast, the XPS and 9100 are very powerful machines computation wise, but they are heavier (4kg), bulkier, have not very good battery life, and give off quite a bit of heat.

So to sum it up. The M60 will serve you as a proper, powerful laptop that you will be able to take everywhere with you, and will give excellent battery life with very good graphics (especially for Autocad etc.). As it's also built very well, it will last for years and handle abuse. The XPS/9100 will be a faster laptop with even better graphics, but probably you will leave it at your desk more, as the extra weight and lower battery life mean you won't use it as much as a 'laptop'. It is also the choice I think for the hardcore gamer.

My advice would be to stick with the M60, it seems to be what you need more!