e1705 purchase

I'm about to pull the trigger on this. I'll mainly be using it for web surfing and video editing. Are there any other worthy upgrades I should consider? Is the ultrasharp UXGA lcd monitor worth the extra $139? Also, I know that Dell ofter runs promotions. Is this a good price or will something better come along? Thanks for your help.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5200 (1.60GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB) OPERATING SYSTEM Windows Vista™ Home Premium with 1GB of memory
LCD PANEL 17 inch Wide Screen XGA+ TFT Display with TrueLife™(glossy)
MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz edit
HARD DRIVE 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R
VIDEO CARD 256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory edit
SOUND OPTIONS Integrated Audio edit

My Accessories
BATTERY OPTIONS 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery edit
WIRELESS CARDS Dell Wireless 1390b/g (54Mbps) edit
BLUETOOTH OPTIONS Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Internal (2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate)

Price after $400 discount with shipping and tax: $1,177.26

 

Well, as UXGA screen will have ultra small text all with it's resolution. Just something to keep in mind. In terms of video editing, I am not sure what is "good " to have in terms of hardware. But I would imagine a 7200rpm HD and a slightly faster CPU would be beneficial to you. Also, you can save some $$ by buying RAM from a place like neweggg and installing it yourself.

 

Thanks for the reply. If I were to get the E1705 with only 1GB of Ram, does it come with in one stick or (2) sticks of 512MB? Also, how much of a difference would it make by moving up to the Core 2 Duo T7200 from the T5200?

Thanks,

Dave

 

If it comes with two sticks, it will say something like 2 DIMMS in the selection where if it is one stick, it will say 1 DIMM somewhere in the selection. As far as the processor step up I am not entirely sure, hopefully someone else will post, I am not sure what video editing demands are.

 

For heavy video encoding I would reccomend the T7200, the extra cache will help, for your purpoese the wuxga could be a very good thing, you will have a lot more screen real estate to work with( the uxga screen can display MANY more individual pixel than the xga+, more pixels = more information displayed on the screen). I think wuxga is a perfect fit for a 17" display, its way overkill for a 15" display though in my opinion. I had an e1505(15.4") with wsxga+ 1680x1050 and absolutely loved it. Heres a comparion between your options

17" wxga+ : 1440x900, 1.29 Mpixels .255mm Pixel pitch

17" wuxga : 1920x1200, 2.3 Mpixels .191mm Pixel pitch

If I had to choose between the screen or the cpu, personally I would go with the screen, the 7200 would be more nimble at encoding, but the screen is something you'll be looking at all the time.