Thinking about buying a 700m

I'm looking at a laptop for school. I've been looking closely at the 700m as well as the Averatec 3250H1. I like the Averatec price but I'm also drawn to the Dell because of the customization I can do as well as the fact that I have had a Dell desktop for 3 going on 4 years now and have never had any problems. For those who have the 700m what are your thoughts on the machine?

 

I like it alot. the weight and size are perfect for me. here are my complaints: (1) 90% keyboard, which wasn't necessary. it takes some getting use to, in order to hit the comma, period, and forward slash keys accurately. plus the keyboard makes your right hand hover over the touchpad, which can pose problems of jumpy cursors, but you can alleviate by setting synaptic touchpad setting to more aggressive; (2) battery performance stinks if you do not have an 8cell. i'm not concerned that it sticks out a little from the back. that said, dell's bios update A01 does not maximize the chipset in the 8-cell or 4-cell. i attribute low battery life of 4-cell with this. evidentally this may come out in A02 early next year. my 8-cell is showing up on Sandra Pro as 44Kwh which is probably why i'm only getting 2.5 hours life on it. others are getting 4-5 hours, which given my figures i should be getting. i'm waiting on a replacement battery. this may also be do to bios and or windows xp not necessarily recognizing the bios as being APCI compatible. i clean installed when i got the computer read this article http://www.theeldergeek.com/clean_installation_of_windows_xp.htm now i'm not a computer expert so i don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but i thought i read that APCI also controls pwoer management; (3) other computer makers in this size range (sony, apple etc) use magnesium alloy on their cases. i would prefer that over plastic of the 700m. if i had seen the sony i probably would have gotten it b/c of the case. that said, the 700m is definitely better build quality than other dell laptops that i've own. things just aren't creaking and jiggly even though its plastic. i bought a 12" zeroshock sleeve from www.shinza.com for $38 (includes shipping) to protect the case; (4) first run models i believe have Hitachi hard drives. if you look at the dell forum, it seems that everyone with hard drive problems and click, click, click hard drive death sounds, is a Hitachi hard drive. funny since the 700m service manual shows a seagate hard drive. anyways, like those people, i heard click click after a couple days and looked and found a Hitachi hard drive. I'm waiting on a replacement hard drive before the thing completely fails; (5) 256MB Ram really stinks, especially since graphics shares its ram. since dell charges alot for memory modules unless they have upgrade promotion, i'd get with 256MB and buy ram elsewhere. I chose www.oempcworld.com because i've had great experiences with them, they are very cheap, have lifetime warranty, satisfaction guaranteed, and do buyback of your old RAM. I bought a 1GB low heat/low power module (designed for athalon and apple powerbooks, but will work wonderfully in the 700m) and put in slot A under the keyboard. the low heat/low power module only comes in 1GB though; (6) when i bought my last laptop, dell included system restore disc, which i hated because i don't want all the crud they load the computers with like all the trial ware etc. this time they give OS, a separate drivers and utilities disc, and separate software discs. there is however a mirror of your system for system restore on your hard drive. if you are comfortable with your abilities, then you can free up hard drive space by deleting that partion and repartitioning. it takes up hard drive space, but i like that idea if i needed it. that's it. although i have battery and hard drive issues, i like it over all.

 

Wow, thank you for your thoughts. It certainly gave me a lot to think about. I'm wondering how much it will cost me all together when I upgrade everything to respectable levels though. The base model is pretty skimpy isn't it?

 

well, you can go to dell's website. i believe they have free shipping and $200 rebate plus they have rebates for extended warranties.

 

You might want to read this fellows post and maybe talk with him about his experiences with the 700m.
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7909

Jack

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

That's pretty coincidental. I am a grad student as well. I also owned an inspiron 5000, well the 5000e before i got the 700m. i hated the 5000/5000e: it was too big, the plastic always fell apart on it, and it finally fell apart on me. anyways, i write lots of papers as well, and haven't found any difficulty with the screen, nor the keyboard. like i said before, it takes a little getting use to especially the comma, period, and forward slash. anyways, we have the same background but different perspectives about the 700m

 

it seems like people either love the 700m or hate it.

how long does it typically take for a notebook to start dropping in price? also i hear a lot about "coupons". where can i find these coupons to save me a bit of money?

 

dell had a big coupon promotion when it introduced the 700m. they are running some promotions on various parts in customizing the configuration. they change it every so often. i would look to after the new year for a price drop in the 700m, maybe better during the holiday season they may drop a little. my best guess is six months after release for substantial decreases in price which is right around the new year. plus dell will have figures on how well the 700m is selling by then since the holiday's are over.

 

Another question i have about the 700m is whether it would be powerful enough to play the odd computer game or two. what kind of specs would i be wise to get to make sure it runs smoothly?

 

i'm not a big gamer and this ain't really a gaming machine, but with that said, i think the graphics is good enough. What you will want though is lots and lots of ram and a large hard drive. i'd go for the 1.6GHz process over the 1.8Ghz and use the difference to by RAM and a larger hard drive. The 700m graphics driver is integrated and shares system RAM. If I was buying from Dell, i'd just get the larger hard drive option, but buy RAM elsewhere. Ifyou don't like Dell's HD options, just get the smallest one and get something elsewhere. I've been eyeing Western Digital Scorpio WD800VE, which is 80GB low power 5400rpm HD (difficult to find right now, though, and WD doesn't even sell it on their website). But you may want something that does 7200RPM. I like www.oempcworld.com, because they are cheaper, have lifetime guarantee, and buy back your old RAM. I bought 1GB module for $235. It's the low heat, low power module, the normal one is $230. Since I put it in slot A, under the keyboard, i opted for the low heat, low power version (1.0G-SO2700LH, which is listed for athalon and apple powerbook but works as replacement for any PC2700). figure you'll get around $30-$40 back for your 256MB RAM if you return in, that's a great deal. I just kept it and put it in slot B though. If you want more, you can buy two 1GB modules. for my needs, that's way overkill. oh and don't forget to get 8-cell battery as primary battery rather than the 4-cell. 4-cell stinks for battery life. I hope dell will fix and take advantage of the chip in the batteries and centrino in their next bios update. they removed bios A01, b/c people were having difficulty flashing their bios. i didn't have a problem flashing to A01, but it didn't do much as far as fixing battery life issues. other boards indicate that that A02 was coming up early next year and probably would address it. Now that dell pulled A01, maybe it will come earlier. don't know. anyways, this is me rambling. My whole goal since battery life sucks is to get low power devices (i.e. the RAM and HD).

 

Should i consider going with the 600m and saving a couple hundred dollars? Is that an option for me?

 

that's a good question. right now, the 600m is $234 less than the 700m (this is the 1.6Ghz pentium M (you have a choice of M or celeron in the 600m), 60GB HD, 512MB 2-dimmm RAM). take into consideration that $31 of that is b/c dell is charging more for the ram and HD for the 700m. the other $200 is the b/c dell is giving 9% off of the 600m versus 5% off 700m. they are really similarily priced. just what your needs are i guess. i've never owned a 600m so i do not know the build quality. i will say that the 700m is alot better build quality than past laptops i've had from dell. everything just seems to be tighter together and no loose or flexible plastic parts (it just feels sturdy). other considerations, 600m bigger screen, full size keyboard, heavier. other reviews seem to like other similar laptops versus the 600m. I think there is a difference in purpose and use between 700m and 600m so I don't think you can really compare between them. for me, i've lugged around a 5000e for the past year for school and it fell apart on me because of it. before that time, the weight and size of the 5000e dissuaded me from carrying it around. first decide what you want it for. when i bought the 5000e i was thinking desktop replacement but bought a desktop too, so i had essentially two similar computers. what i really wanted was a desktop and then something i could carry easily for school and work. now that laptops have gotten smaller and more powerful, you have lots of choices. when my 5000e finally fell apart, my whole thought was smaller and lighter for school and to maybe watch dvd's on trips. so i eliminated things without optical drives. i have an ipod, so i wanted something with integrated firewire. i have a SD camera, and the 700m has sd slot. i thought about apple, but i'm too use to windows. i've had dells, so i didn't really look at the similar sony vgn-s260 (has separate graphcs 32MB graphcs card, and i like the magnesium alloy case). The sony only has 1 year warranty, and i like dell's 4 year complete care (i'm accident prone). so, making things shorter, first ask yourself what your needs are, and then eliminate things that do not fit into that category.