Thinking about a new inspiron lappy, need some advice

Okay so I am not sure if it's going to be a 15.6 or 17 incher, but I figure the questions are about the same for each of these models. I have read that i7's overheat in lappys, is the same true for the i5? And also are the newer 2nd gen 15R's and 17R's better then the older lets say 1545 or 1564's? If so why? What makes them better or worse? I currently have a little dell mini 1012 and LOVE It, but giving it to my mom, she needs something small, so after it's ram upgrade it's going to her next week.

I want something fast, with a blu ray drive and most likely an i5. I don't know if we'll want or need to upgrade the RAM in the new lappy or the hard drive, but I read somewhere the new R series do NOT have the access door so you have to do some wicked unassembling. Is there a lot of difference between a i3 and an i5 in a lappy? Hubby wants the i5 but I would honestly be fine with an i3 for my needs, but he wants to run WoW and other games, so odds are we're going to get a discrete graphic card too.

Thanks in advance all! Not sure what way to go on the bigger lappy except that I want at least 15.6" and maybe even 17". Thanks for any light you can shed on the above questions or any links you can share to help me determine what would suit our needs the best. The last question I forgot to ask was about the newer webcams, are they better on the 2nd gen even though they are 1 MP? Is it worth going with the 2nd gen overall or are the tried and true models better, like the first gen R's and the 1545 & 1564's? Thanks again!

 

The 15R (N5010) and the new 15R (N5110) utilize the same basic chassis design. It has a RAM door on the bottom. But it seems like Dell for their Inspiron line is making it harder to get access to the hard drive (you have to remove all the bottom screws, keyboard and palmrest to get to the drive). Servicing so many 15R, it doesn't really take more than 5 minutes to get to the drive but it is a daunting task if you've never done it before. It really depends on what you are doing, but I recommend at least a Core i5 as it has Turbo Boost which will temporarily overclock CPU cores to give it a speed boost. Then it will go back down when the work is complete. You benefit in single threaded applications. i7's are only really for high end users (people who compile/render/extreme gaming) and typically aren't worth it for average consumers.

For you, honestly I don't think the Inspiron are worth getting. There is no upgrade for the 15.6" resolution, you are stuck at 1368x768. 17.3" is also stuck at 1600x900. You could take a look at the XPS 15 R2 if you really want to stick with Dell, and I highly recommend the FHD 1080p B+RGLED screen. You'll get discreet graphics as well as a powerful machine. Just make sure you buy that extended warranty given the XPS track record. If you don't want to stick with Dell, there are plenty of other series that do fit your needs.

 

If you're buying the blu ray to watch movies on the laptop, I'd look at the 1920x1080 screen so they can run in their native resolution. I'll have to caveat this with the fact that I'm a fan of high resolution displays. Still, if you're happy with the size of everything on your Mini 10, a FHD screen will have pixels fairly close to the same size on a 15.6" laptop. To me, the 1368 screens look blown up and fuzzy. That killed the 15R for me.

Here's a link that compares the pixels per inch for various size screens:
DPI (Fineness) of Displays - Notebookcheck.net Tech

-Trash

 

Thank you both for the awesome posts and advice. I am still not sure what we're going to do. Hubby is now talking about making an external BD and just going with the 17R with a discrete graphics card. I don't know honestly, but I know I can live without the blu ray, since we have a blu ray player already.

Thanks again! Will report back with whatever we end up purchasing.