switching from thinkpad to dell: few questions

guys, I have always used thinkpads. currently I am on t40 (from work).

I need another laptop for home. Now I am a big fan of thinkpads. But recently when I started shopping for laptops, I have found some dell deals to be very lucrative. Inpiron 6000 is almost half the price(after applying coupons) of t42/t43 and has more features. I use my laptop for lightweight development like VB/,net/java compiler/MS SQL server or even oracle. I run oracle and java compiler and weblogic on my t40 and it never gives me a hard time. I remeber 2-3 years ago two of my coworkers who had dell laptops at home told me that they can never run all these applications at the same time on their dells since it always heats up too much or windows crashes...etc. So they would always take the office laptops(t40) home.

Since then, I have always had a bad impression about dells. I am sure dell makes a good laptop for a basic home user but to me, they are not as sturdy as thinkpads when it comes to intensive tasks like the ones I mentioned above.

My first question is: Have things changed now? How are the new dell inspirons and latitudes? Do they still have overheating and crashing problems?

Now I am in the market for a new system. I am not into gaming at all.

My ideal system will have
- no heat issues. On t40 I can run databases and app servers to develop without any problems.
- not very heavy. something in the range of 5-6lbs will be good.
- additionaly I wil also use this system for playing movies/music. I am not concerned about the laptop screen since I will hook up this machine to an external LCD TV.

My budget is around 1500. Again, this equals to the t42 budget. I came to this budget last month when I decided to buy another t42 for my home. but now that I research more, I found that inpirons are seling for almost half the price. I have not looked into compaqs/toshiba/sonys etc as I dont think they make commercial grade machines.

I am sure you guys here in this forum are up to date with the current technologies and machines. Please guide me to the right direction.

thank you!

 

If you can get a nicely configured T42 for $1500 i'd say stick w/ that! They are extremely well built machines, and $1500 isn't bad at all. The Dell latitudes are better built than the Inspirons -- which supposely was designed for home-use, with features more geared toward that -- like media buttons and such. That being said, I really don't have many complaints about my I9300 -- I think it's a well built machine. Heard decent things about I6000 as well. Neither of these systems should overheat, and they certainly can take any apps you throw at it, given enough memory and HD, just like any other computer. The fit'n finish of the Inspirons aren't as "business-ish" as the thinkpads, and doesn't look as sharp, but hey you do pay a little less... It's a toss up, both would work, just which would u prefer?

cheers,

yass

 

As long as you have a Pentium M running insdie a machine things aren't going to get incredibly hot unless the mfr. doesn't put any vents or fans on the notebook whatsoever! Anyway, I used the Inspiron 8200 a few years back and was running Visual Studio + SQL Server 2000, the notebook sat on a desk and never overheated or crashed due to those applications. The latest Dell notebooks certainly won't have a problem running these apps.

Now, I use a ThinkPad T40 too and wouldn't trade it for an Inspiron, the usability, mobility and better build of a ThinkPad is simply to great a factor, no matter what the extra cost, for my needs. But if you want bang for the buck and save a bunch of dollars then Dell is probably the way to go.

DigitalCameraReview.com | BargainPDA.com | TabletPCReviewSpot.com