Question about 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS

I have decided to buy a 1520 Dell Inspiron and I'm having a little trouble deciding whether to pick the 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS video card or update it a little more. I won't be playing games on my laptop, and will basically be doing some photoshop work from time to time. I have to choose between upgrading my hard drive space to 250 gb (seeing as I'm a music aficionado with thousands of songs) or upgrading my video card which I'm not sure would really be extremely necessary in the end.

Here are the system specs I'm currently looking at:

SYSTEM COLOR Jet Black
PROCESSOR: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5450 (1.66GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition
LCD PANEL:Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)
MEMORY:2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
HARD DRIVE:Size: 250GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
OPTICAL DRIVE: CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
VIDEO CARD:128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS
PRIMARY BATTERY:85Whr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell)

 

By what you describe I would go with the hard drive. Most people will say to get the better graphics card because you can't really upgrade the graphics card later down the road...but the hard drive is relatively easy to swap out for a better one.

that being said, if you don't plan on playing games, editing movies, or any other heavy graphics stuff, get the bigger hard drive. I have the 8400 graphics and its great, but I have 20 gigs of songs and 20 gigs of photos so my 160 gig hard drive is already pretty small. But really, I have 40 gigs left, im not going to fill that up, if i do i'll burn those 20 gigs of pics onto dvds.

 

If all you're doing with it is photoshop, I think the money would be better spent on other upgrades.

 

Firstly buy the vostro 1500 or vostro 1400 as its cheaper yet comes with a better processor which will be helpful when you use photoshop. Dont go for the graphics update, definately go with the hhd upgrade instead.

 

imo if you have no plans to play any newer intensive games on it i would not get the graphics, the 8400m gs is a very good card and imo the only real benefit for you to go 8600gt would be to game on it..

 

go for the 8400M GS and the 250GB HDD! I'm already running out of HD space..I don't know how but somethings hogging up alot of space. Especially if you purchase the Adobe Design Premium set..took up almost 3-4 GB for the install

 

Check out diskpie or something if you want an idea of what's taking up space on your drive.

I also found this in a quick google search of "hard drive space visualizer":
http://lifehacker.com/software/disk-space/geek-to-live--visualize-your-hard-drive-usage-219058.php

 

Here is my take on it. Go with a 7200 RPM drive, 3GB of ram, the 8400 should be fine, use an external usb powered 2.5 inch drive for the music.

Now for the explanation

7200 RPM drive because regardless of ram, adobe loves a page file. The speed here will pay off in performance.
3GB of ram because adobe loves ram
an external drive for the music because you will get more space for less money and can keep the important things (i.e. the operating system and files you are working with) on the system HD. Reading music requires little bandwidth, so you won't be needlessly taxing the main HD while listening to music. If you want to copy over some music to the HD for a session so you don't need the external attached, you can do that

Beyond that, a processor with a 4MB cache will help as Adobe's software can pipe enough info through it to matter.

Or you could just go for a lower end precision laptop...nah

And as another note, a higher resolution screen will really help with Adobe

 

If you're getting the 1520, get the 8600. Otherwise, you could have better battery life with the 14".