Thinking of Buying Latitude D820 - Questions

I currently own HP Pavilion zd8000 3.2ghz Pentium M, 1gb RAM, 128mb ATI x600. It's a 17" and I'm looking for something smaller but not too small so I'm thinking about buying the D820. I've never owned a Dell before so am just looking to pick people's brains a bit.
I mainly use my laptop for photo editing (PS Elements 4), web browsing, word processing and email. I like it to be pretty fast though.
Here are my questions:

1. When customising on the Dell website, there's the option of buying a 6 cell battery or a 9 cell. Is their any difference in the size of the two i.e. does the 9 cell stop the laptop from sitting flat on a surface? I've seen the pictures of the two on their website but can't tell if there is a size difference.

2. What's the fan noise like? The HP is pretty noisy at times.

3. What level of heat does it produce? The HP can get quite hot. I don't mind some heat but not too much!

4. What's the finish like? Does it feel well made?

5. How tall is the laptop when closed and also when open (top section and bottom section separately)?

I really appreciate any help!

Thanks

 

1.no
2.quiet(Dell laptops can use a great program called I8kfangui)
3.the bottom is a bit warm
4.much sturdier than zd8000
5.dunno

 

Thanks for that, is that program a feature of Dell laptops or something that can be downloaded?

 

it's freeware created by a dutch(?) programmer.

you should verify if it works on the 820 or not as it was originally written for the 8000 series of inspirons, but has pretty good cross compatibility with other dell notebooks.

 

I can vouch that I8kfangui works with a D820.

 

nice choice of laptop, wish I had the bucks for the pricier ones. But alas got a cheap one But looks good.