Vostro 1500 Resolution With 256 mg 8600M GT

I ordered a Dell Vostro 1500 the other day with the following specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 1.8ghz 2meg cache
2 gig ram
160 gig HD
1280 x 800 display
9 cell battery
256 meg 8600M GT

I managed to get this ordered for £539 inc vat and delivery. There were some problems with my order and I had to cancel and replace. In the interim I read a fair few of the threads on here and when I went to configure my new order I upgraded a couple of specs to:
Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2ghz 4 meg cache
2 gig ram
160 gig HD
1440 x 900 with true life
9 cell battery
256 meg 8600M GT

I also put in bluetooth and got a remote. The upgrades took me up to £650. My question is was it worth it for the extra gaming goodness I want. I will mainly be playing Medieval 2, Oblivion, Stalker and Flight Sim X. Will this maching be able to hack those games at higher settings? I have a desktop with AMD Athlon Dual Core running at 1.8ghz with a gig of ram and a Sparkle 8600 GT in there. Flight Sim chugged on medium to high settings and Medieval struggled with AA on. I have never really had a machine that can put out PC games a full detail. I am not that bothered about resolution, thats a bonus. Any ideas?

 

I don't think the higher resolution is worth it.
Unnecessary (albeit small) strain on battery and GPU for such a small difference. I'm quite happy w/ my WXGA, but this may just be me.

 

The CPU upgrade will make little or no differance for games. I have a similar setup and I can run Mediecal Total war 2 at 1440x900 so atleast in this case the higher resolution screen makes sense. For most other games 1280x800 is enough. 1440x900 is a lot nicer to work with but if you only game and want to keep it cheap go for the 1280x 800 screen. Just turn up the settins and use high AA and it will look pretty at 1280x800.

 

Thats what I was thinking after I hit submit order. I was reading on another thread about games native resolution. Is the native res 1440 x 900 or 1280 x 800. Irony is I am not that bothered about playing my games in higher res, only full detail. Will that processor upgrade make much difference? I went for it based on advice in another thread with regards to RTS games, which I play more than any other

 

The CPU makes more of a differance in RTS then is FPS. But still you wont notice the differance so save the money or spend it on something like a faster hard disk or more ram.

 

Well I figure I only buy a laptop once every 3 years or so and you cant upgrade them once you have them so I will go with the spec. This will be my first laptop with dedicated graphics. I have always had bad experiences with laptop gaming in the past, restricted to older games, so I am hoping this will be the real deal. To play Medieval 2 on full settings on the go is what I am after, if it delivers that then I will be happy. There were no other options to upgrade the HD and the ram upgrade was something like £300 to go to 4gigs which is out of my budget. I read somewhere on here that vista only reads up to 3 gigs anway. Is this right?