Please help me- new to laptops

Hello, as my name implies I'm very new to the laptop world. I am 3-4 semmesters from finishing school and am finding class schedules to leave huge (2-3hour) gaps between classes. Thus I'm thinking of a laptop.

After a little bit of searching I came across this site, and the Dell Inspiron 9300. After reading the forums a little bit, I'm pretty sure this will handle my needs but figured --> You guys know best. Thus I want to run it by you and maybe get some feedback on a cheaper system.

My max on budget is $1600 and that alone is really pushing it. I'd love to get something under that by a few hundred...

Inspiron 9300 --> $1,458
1.60GHz/533MHz FSB
256MB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 1 Dimm
40GB Hard Drive
256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 6800

Hardrive Space isn't an issue, as this won't replace my desktop. Ram can be upgraded through another website(I read it was cheaper to do it that way) and the NVIDA card - to play games. WoW and maybe HL2.

My idea is to have something that I can play games on(WoW) maybe watch a few movies, and be able to use as a mini office while at school. I can find a plug in, thus the extra power supply isn't a big issue.

So is this overkill for what I'm wanting? Can you Lead me to something cheaper that might still get the job done?
-I know the 17in screen will be a pain to lug around, Bug it was the only one I found with that video card. ie- dedicated memory (Which as I've read is a must for games)

Thanks for the help guys n gals
Dunno_Jack

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Dunno_Jack

 

Thanks for the Reply HeartofGold

Here are a few answers to your questions.

"which screen you decided on..." - Just the simple basic config one. I don't think it has the trueform (don't even know what that is)

"upgrade the Ram (1 gig ?)..." -Yeah my goal would be to put in a Gig, just because thats what I run on my Desktop. I've never had anything game wise push more then that, even with backgroud apps running.

"not your only P.C...." - Yeah I've got a normal desktop I built from scratch... okay, So it used to be an old HP pavilion, but the only thing that remains is the keyboard. I don't remember the specs exactly, and I'm at school right now, but it is a p4-2.8, 1gig ram, msi9800 pro, audigy1 plat, 400+gigs of space, 550w ps, 8x dvd burner. 52x cd burner. Does everything I need it to for business, school, and games.

"price was after any of the coupons" - This configuration is just speculation at this point. If people came back saying "Hey you can get by with the ati X300 inspiron 6000" etc I didn't want to hasle. So this is just going to dell and doing the "customize" and hitting re-configure price/ship date

"They are so helpful!" - yeah from reading the other messages, this place looks pretty helpful.

"...hard drive..." - I thought about that too. I know if it was a faster 7200 drive it would really make the pc zip. But that also eats into my budget going through Dell. I've read that you can buy new drives, and seen them at places like Frys Electronics, so I would think about that when it became an issue.

"The 35% expires 4/7/05 or until I think 3000 redeemed..."- looks like it is already gone.

Thanks again for the time in reading this and for any help you guys can offer.

Dunno_Jack
~> Learning Jack

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Dunno_Jack

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Dunno_Jack