Need advice, upgrading from i700m and XPS...

I have 2 laptops at the moment. Here are the specs:

Inspiron 700m
2.0 Ghz / 1 gb ram / 80 gb @ 7200

XPS Gen 1
3.4 ht p4 / 1.25 gb ram / 128 ati radeon

I have about $2500.00 to spend on a new upgrade. My three top favorite computers offered by Dell right now are:

D420 Latitude
Duo ULV 1.2 / 1.5 gb / 60 gb @ 4200 - setup price = $1830.00

D820 Latitude
2 Duo 2 / 2 gb / 80 gb @ 7200 - setup price = $2100.00

M1210 XPS
2 Duo 2 / 2 gb / 80 gb @ 5400 - setup price = $2480.00

I program 85% of the time, and play World of Warcraft the other 15%. I mainly use applications such as Dreamweaver, Flash, and Photoshop. Occasionally I use 3D Studio Max R7. I currently have all of these programs installed on both of my laptops. All programs run great except for 3D Studio which is very adequate to work in on my 700m, Wow isn't very playable on the other hand.

I'm leaning towards the 12" laptops for the portability, I go to coffee houses and work quite a bit. However, I do enjoy having 1920x1280 resolution for work space, but spend most of my time on my 700m.

I'm very keen on getting a truebright screen such as the one on my 700m if any of these laptops have it.


My questions:

1. Is my current 700m build more or less powerful / faster than a D420 with its @ 4200 hd?

2. I know Warcraft would fly on an M1210, but how does the D420 fare against a 700m in terms of mild gaming?

3. Out of my 3 favorite choices, which are Vista compatible other than the M1210?

4. What would you get in my case?


Must haves:

3 year accidental - I've spilled before, had motherboard replaced x 3 etc.
Bluetooth
Fingerprint reader if available - this is a very nice plus
Vista capability if possible

 

1) i don't know about the 420, but every other laptop will outperform the 700m.
2) i would say the processor might hurt your gaming on the D420
3) supposedly all three are, but try to stay away from integrated graphics to avoid any headaches. intel parts tend to underdeliver in as many categories as possible
4) D820, your gaming needs *should* be fulfilled by the 120M, almost as good as the M1210. Studio Max will probably perform better on the D820 because of the workstation card. for most purposes, the 120M is *approximately* equivalent to the M1210's 7400.

 

I concur with night_2004. The D420 is nice and very portable... but it doesn't have a built in optical drive and it's got a severly underclocked Core Duo. It's performance has actually been shown to be lower than the D410. The D820 is a pretty low performer in the graphics department for a 15.4", but it's pretty similar to the M1210. As night said, the 120M is approximately the same as the Go7400.

 

If you want/need alot of windows open at once the 1210 may not be what your looking for. I mean the resolution is pretty high for the screen size, and I can have 3 open and viewable windos open at once on it, the widescreen helps alot with that, but if you need more then 3 open at a time you may want to up it to a 15". But like I said I can have firefox, word and something else open and view able at the same time, but 3 is about max for the screen.

As far as multitasking, programing stuff, photoshop and games, the 1210 definitly has the power for them in the processor/RAM/and graphics fields, so its definitly got what your looking for there, along with great portability and battery life.

 

okay, i'm dead set on a m1210, i ordered one, but then called back today and cancelled it - really want the 7200 rpm hard drive, and don't want to pay an additional 350 dollars to get it through their parts department. i see canada still has the 7200 drives available in their m1210 configuration. i tried to get it escalated at dell, but to no avail.

on a second note, do you guys recommend purchasing laptops on ebay? i found a configuration that looks pretty good to me.

 

no...eBay is trouble for big ticket items...at least it has been for me. plus, you have no idea about the warranty status until AFTER you get the notebook. i don't trust ebay...