Would a Dell Inspiron 1720 be worth getting now?

I currently use an old Acer 7104 and have been for 2.5 years, the 17" screen is brilliant but Im really missing gaming which is poor due to a rubbish integrated card.

I was looking at new laptops but my knowledge is so limited, Im not sure if an older 8600m gt would be better than a modern 9300m gs. One inspiron (refurbished and 1 year warranty) caught my eye with these specs:

CPU: T7250 Intel Core2 Duo 2.0GHz (2MB Cache, 800MHz FSB)
Memory: 3GB (3072MB) DDR2 667MHz
Hard Drive: 250GB Serial (SATA)
Display: 17.0" 1440x900 (WXGA+) CCFL Widescreen Display with TrueLife
Optical Drive: DVD-ReWriter Drive
Video: nVidia GeForce 8600M GT Graphics with 256MB Dedicated RAM
Soundcard: Sigma Tel Audio HD
Wireless: YES
Operating System*: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

This would cost me £600 (about $1000)

Im used to a big screen but a 15.4" screen would probably do me.

Any advice on this?

 

I would steer clear of any machine with an nVidia 8xxx card. nVidia has admitted that they didn't make the cards correctly and that they will fail eventually.

 

An 8600 GT would be better than a 9300 GS, which is equal to either an 8400 GS or 8400 GT. Taking a quick look at UK prices, it looks like this is a fair deal overall. But I'll leave it to UK users to be more precise on that. Suffice to say the Sony model that is about $800 with better specs than this on the US site is about £600 with slightly worse specs on the UK site.

The 9500 GS is the equivalent of the 8600 GT amongst the newer GPUs, and the ATI 3650 is slightly better than the 8600 GT.

For booboo's point, I would prefer the 3650 over the 8600 GT. Some 9-series nVIDIA cards have the same manufacturing defect. It doesn't actually mean your card will magically fail (though it's somewhat more likely), so I wouldn't not buy a notebook because it has nVIDIA 8/9 series graphics. But if you don't know why it was refurbished, it might actually be a good idea to play it cautious. Dell isn't always the best in fixing/refurbishing GPU problems.

 

Do you know any laptops off the top of your head that have the ATI 3650 that might be worth checking out?

Thanks for both your replies.

 

Errr - the Studio 1737??

 

Toshiba also uses the ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3650 on several Satellite models- the 15.4" A300, 16" A355 and 17" P300 are available with it in some models.

 

I don't think it's worth going after the Inspiron 1720 at the moment, I believe there are other choices out there to choose from.

No, as far as I am concerned, this isn't affected by the recall. Anyway, my temps were just 65*C max - my personal highest temps ever recorded. Neither has it never gone above 70*C for the whole year - while overclocked by 25% and stress tested for 6 hours straight.

The Inspiron 1720 are one the coolest temperature wise notebooks around. See my sig, it CAN handle an X9000 with the max temps at just 53*C on 100% CPU usage while rendering a 3ds scene for 8 hours straight. It can also handle 6GB RAM.

It was once turned on for a week long - and none of my components reached 60*C. Not a cooler or an air-conditioned room was utilized.

Besides, likewise, I think there are other choices to choose from. Don't just limit yourself to the 1720. I believe the Dell Studio 17 would be a better option.

 

Thats a good point about the refurbishment, I would get a 1 year warranty and its through a dell authorised company that I would be buying. I just like the idea of having XP and the 8600m gt seems to be able to play all the games I want and I assume it has reasonable memory/processor specifications.

Doing a little research before I read some horror stories about the cards failing though which is whats holding me back, but Im finding it hard to find laptops with good graphics cards for reasonable prices as most are just for mainstream so the models I search for just have integrated or lower spec cards.

I did find this studio 1735 on the same refurb site though:

CPU: T5750 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.00GHz (2MB Cache, 667MHz FSB)
Memory: 3GB (3072MB) DDR2 667MHz
Hard Drive: 250GB Serial (SATA)
Display: 17.0" 1440x900 (WXGA+) CCFL Widescreen Display with TrueLife
Optical Drive: DVD-ReWriter Drive
Video: ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3650 Graphics with 256MB RAM
Soundcard: IDT High Definition Audio
Wireless: YES
Operating System*: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium