Dell Core 2 Duo fever - but why ?

64 bit graphics.

 

I am so sick of Dell's pricing. But I know I am kind of stuck with having to buy a notebook from them. I have been scouting the other manufacturers but they are not easily configurable as the dell. I'm looking at the Latitude D820 and was initially going to get one with Yonah but since Merom was only a few months out I have decided to wait. I have been waiting impatiently for when Core 2 Duo would finally appear on the Dell website and I was reward on this past Wednesday. I configured my laptop and it topped near $1600 which was just a little bit pricey. But I logged on to Dells website on Thursday to re-configure my laptop choice and I noticed that Dell had increased the price on the Yonah and Merom chips. See below:

Wednesday pricing:
Core Duo - T2500 - additional $113
Core Duo - T2600 - additional $259
Core 2 Duo - T7200 - same as T2500
Core 2 Duo - T7400 - same as T2600

Thursday
Core Duo - T2500 - additional $140
Core Duo - T2600 - additional $320
Core 2 Duo - T7200 - same as T2500
Core 2 Duo - T7400 - same as T2600

What is the deal with the price increase? I thought Yonah and Merom were using the same pricing structure. Maybe Dell just trying to rob the public.

I also heard from my friend that there is an expected drop in LCD prices scheduled for the end of the month. Can anyone confirm that and do we expect Dell to drop prices slightly or continue there confusing pricing structure.

 

Why are you stuck with Dell? Why not try someone like www.powernotebooks.com that has better machines at better prices, along with great service?

Anyway, at least Dell is charging the same for the Meroms as it is for the Yonahs. But those price fluctuations are pretty much normal. Welcome to economics 101.

 

These are my specs:
Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz w/4mb Cache
512mb or 1 gig ram - 533 or 677, I can always pick up extra ram @ newegg
80 Gig 7200rpm HD
Vista Aero Capable Video Card - tailored towards more business related but may do slight gaming - Civilization III and IV

Has to be a Business Quality machine - rugged and easy to handle when I travel on business trips. Standard 3 year business warranty.

Price range tops out at $1500 - taxes and shipping included

I just checked powernotebooks and they don't expect Merom until sometime October

 

Both those Asus and Sager notebooks on that site cost more than the e1705.

I'm also highly suspicuous on that weird 17" keyboard layout. Notice that it has a numeric keyboard, and how they positioned the touchpad. Normally, the touchpad would have to be off-center to the left. They kept it kind of the middle. Line it up with the space bar, it's way too far to the left. Imaging typing on it using the normal 10 finger typing. Your right hand'd be constantly hitting the touchpad. Bad design.

NO, Dell is NOT charging the same for the Meroms as it is for the Yonahs.

I've gone through this over and over. You can see all the messages I've typed about this if you like. It's a little overboard, but it took quite a bit of effort to prove that I was right.

It's about deals, pre-config'ed packages, coupons, and other links found on the internet. There is the as-advertised section and a number of other incentives. Line up the best deals possible, and you'll that right now, a Dell laptop with a Merom cost more than with a Yonah.

 

It doesn't matter what the pricing structure is for Merom and Yonah. Retailers and OEM's set their prices according to availability and demand. If an item is in high demand and they ither see an opportunity to make an extra buck or they have lower availability then they will raise the price. It has always been that way and this is nothing new. When Conroe was released it was being sold at a higher premium then expected, especially the E6600 which was in high demand and low availability. Prices will begin to fall once Intel starts shipping more Merom processors and demand for the new processor levels off.

 

Actually it's a good design. My HP dv2000t is the same way. When the touchpad is in the center and the keyboard is off center to the left it positions your right hand over the touchpad so that you can quickly and easily use your right thumb on the touchpad to move the mouse pointer without having to move your hand one way or another from your current typing position.

 

No one will have the T7200 and higher Merom's until October. PowerNotebooks currently has the T5500's in stock, and are shipping with them. They may have run out already, though.

Oh, and a1mint: I was speaking in regards to the prices Dylan255 posted. I don't care what you found in your deal and coupon hunting, most people will go for the 20% off on $999+ and call it good. He was talking about as configured from Dell, how most people will see them, and they're not deviating on the surface from pricing them at parity.

 

The prices of Dell Home + Home Office PC prices change only daily depding on the coupons that you find and which are available. Dell Small Business is pretty straight forward and I was suprised to see the increase in price just a day after they first started appearing in the Latitude. I would surely jump to a Gateway, HP or etc but when you configure them they are priced a couple hundred more then a Dell. But you don't find many manufacturers giving you a 3 year deal in say a sub 1000 priced laptop like Dell does. It would be nice to see Dell not jump on the opportunity to make a few dollars more of the unsuspecting public.

 

You didn't understand me right, or I didn't explain myself correctly.

You're right about the dv2000t being a good design (aside from the fatal keyboard-skips-keys-for-no-reason bug - read about that on a forum on this site about that!), in terms of it not interfering with the touchpad.

On the HP, the touch pad is not in the middle, but further to the left. When you start typing, you essentially sit slightly off the left side of the laptop. It's like the screen is sticking out on the right a bit.
Aside from that being a little strange (good design or not perhaps), when you type, the touchpad is exactly in the middle of your two hands.

On that Sager laptop, the one from that website that that other fellow pointed out, they thought to be qute and place the touch pad NOT in the middle of the main keyboard section. From a distance it looks good, and only an idiot shopping for a laptop in a magazine might fall for it. When you type of it, I bet the right hand scratches all over the touchpad. It's kind of a laugh really.

I haven't actually seen it though. I think I'll look up some reviews, see what others have to say about it. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

Yes they are, just accept the simple fact.

If you find a laptop on the street you can't say laptops are free. If you have a coupon for a product it only means you get that product at that time for a special price, it's not something that goes for all products.

It's simple, Dell charge the same for a T2500 as a T7200 upgrade, nothing more, nothing less. If you then later on have a rebate or coupon on the price, or find a deal of some kind it does NOT change the fact that the upgrade was the same price.

Get the deals out of your head and look at a global perspective.

 

Which is why we should do our missionary work and tell others around us to be always very suspicious, careful, and not so impulsive.

 

There must be some sort of misunderstanding. I need to explain things more precisely. I'm shocked at the number of people that keep argueing against that point I made. I'll have to go back to explanation school or something.

Ok, I'll try again:

"For weeks now, when you compare the best deals on Dell laptops in Canada, you will find that in order to get a C2D you have to pay more money than a similarly configured CD laptop. This is because Dell has special promotions that give you an extra incentive to buy a system with just a CD chip. These specials can sometimes be found on the as-advertised section, the flyer sections, online coupon sites, and possible in some other places as well."

Really, I'm not BS'ing anyone. I really would have had to pay close to $300 CDN more to get a semi-loaded 9400 with a C2D.

Now, if I simply go to the website and compare the different columns and only look at that, then yes! You'll see upgrades like $100 to or like $57 even, to get the C2D.
On the US site you'll see that upgrade options with both C2D and CD's on the same list.
On the Canadian site you never see a single list with both C2D and CD's. You have to instead start with a different column.

Dell's pricing structure is convoluted, and full of little tricks, like it's a magic show or something. If any still like to contest that, then Dell's tactics are truly working. This means they shouldn't change a thing.
With Dell's recent finance problems, they're desperately looking for ways to improve their business, and they should.
I *thought* I had an idea of what they could do to improve it, but based on some of the feedback, I'm not sure they should...

 

Dell's pricing system is fine. No one but you seems to have a problem/issue with Dell and the way that their pricing is set up. If you're trying to tell me that the most successful and largest computer company in the world needs help improving their business, you are dead wrong. Dell is doing fine, a 10 year old can understand their pricing...it seems that YOU are the only one on the site who has an issue with their pricing, maybe you should stop whining in every Dell thread and go call Dell and talk to them yourself, I'm sure a 16 year old pakistani kid would be glad to teach you how to read a website.

 

I've never had any problem the keyboard skipping keys for no reason on my dv2000t. The touchpad is also dead center in the middle of the laptop. It's not to the left or the right. The keyboard is designed to be off to the left so your right hand is close to being directly over the touchpad. There is a button to turn the touchpad on and off right by the touchpad so you can switch it off if you are typing and your hand is brushing it.

 

I just took a trip over to Dell.ca and a1mint is right, Dell doesn't allow you to go straight from a C1D to a C2D. You have to start with a C2D and upgrade up. Maybe you should check it out before trying to trash him.

And yes, Dell is a successful company. However, they DO need to change their business. Their share on the market is slipping. Perhaps you should read up on articles on them in say...maybe...BusinessWeek? There was an article about Dell a month or two ago.

 

lol. just because a company seems to be doing well, it doesnt mean that it is doing well in the market. high schoolers these days. they think they know everything after taking one intro to business class. sheesh.

 

Please keep on-topic in here please - it's starting to escalate into an arguement and that sort of content is best left off the forums.

 

You sound like one of those 10 year olds that fall for their little pricing tricks. You fall right into it.

You might want to rethink your answer before myself or someone else will drag you through your own mud...

Anyway. End of day - we simply disagree. You claim there is nothing to it, finding the best deal on Dell. And I claim that in order to find the best deal you have to go scrounching around, something many people either won't do, or don't know how to do. I also claim that C2D systems are priced higher with Dell than C1D systems - but you have to go beyond just selecting from a few columns.

My intend was to vent my frustration, wake up others, with the hopes that it would help people, and that things would improve (I do have to buy another laptop in a few years...). In essence, I'm on the same side (except for that one inappropriate remark).

Overal, Dell is PDC (Pretty Darn Cool).

 

Either you haven't seen the Canadian pricing, or you're not seeing the same as-advertised and coupon sites as you do. Possibly because you keep looking at US sites, and I at Canadian sites.

I could get all pissed off at you calling me names and all, but that's not going to lead anywhere.

You might want to rethink your answer before myself or someone else will drag you through your own mud...

Anyway. End of day - we simply disagree. You claim there is nothing to it, finding the best deal on Dell. And I claim that in order to find the best deal you have to go scrounching around, something many people either won't do, or don't know how to do. I also claim that C2D systems are priced higher with Dell than C1D systems - but you have to go beyond just selecting from a few columns.

My intend was to vent my frustration, wake up others, with the hopes that it would help people, and that things would improve (I do have to buy another laptop in a few years...).
People might hold off on buying for instance, insisting that the C2D premium pricing must end before considering to buy.
In essence, I'm on the same side (except for that one inappropriate remark).

Overal, Dell is PDC (Pretty Darn Cool).

 

It's strange how you keep continuing "arguing" your deals and coupons, they have NOTHING to do with the pricing of C2D @ Dell. Core Duo is in a phase out stage, hence you get deals on _some_ configurations, not all, and that's why you can't generalize like you do. As I said before, if you get a deal on one laptop it doesn't mean the next laptop has the same price.

Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2700 (2.33GHz/667Mhz) [add $810]
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7600 (2.33GHz/667MHz/4MB) [add $810]
Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2500 (2.00GHz/667MHz) [add $240]
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7200 (2.00GHz/667MHz/4MB) [add $240]

And here's the definite part proving you totally wrong.
Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2300E (1.66GHz/667Mhz) [Included in Price]
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5500 (1.66GHz/667MHz/2MB) add $0

You see... $0... that means you don't pay anything at all to get a C2D.

I say it again, you can not base the general pricing on coupons and special deals, you have to be a little more objective than that.

 

Can we all agree to disagree on this whole subject of Dell pricing. And I understand that the pricing structure differs from what country you are purchasing the computer from. For us to assume that Deal has the best deal is an understatement. My original point was I saw an increase from $113 from the base Core Duo 1.66 to the Core 2 Duo 2.0 on Wednesday. And when I checked the following day they had increased the price from $113 to $140, but the price was more of a premium on the 2.16ghz. Which I feel they are priced way to high anyways. I just feel Dell is taking advantage of release of Merom to well may a few extra bucks. And if you consider the best deal all around performance for the bang of the buck the T7200, would be an all around winner. As far as the Dell business side of things they have been losing Market Share to other manufacturers who have an in-store presence like HP, Toshiba etc. Dell does business policy hasn't changed and they said they won't change they will open some more kiosks but you still can't get the laptop or the computer of your choice right then and there. Dell has been very successful with there business and pricing structure but the other manufacturers are starting to use that against them now. In the end if it has anything to do with supply and demand I don't know. I have come to agree and disagree Dell is still asking consumers to fork more dough out. All you have to do is monitor Dell site daily and weekly and you'll see the games they play.

 

Yes, it is. However, it also depends on what you measure.
Various parts of the Nintendo 64 was 8, 32 or 64 bit respectively.
The main CPU itself was a 64-bit CPU working on 32-bit instructions using a 32-bit bus to communicate with the rest of the system.

In any case, 64-bit CPU's are really old news. Consoles like the N64 don't really count, but there's been commercial processors made since the mid-90's that were fully 64 bit.

It's just taken a while to migrate to PC's, for a number of reasons.
The PC CPU architecture has only recently caught up with the rest of the world in performance. Until that happened, it'd be suicide to try to add complicated stuff like 64-bit support.
It's also a hellishly messy instruction set, and simply finding a way to squeeze in 64-bit support wasn't a trivial task. And finally, there just hasn't been a need for it until very recently. Could you imagine needing more than 4GB of memory, say, 3 years ago?
Big servers certainly needed that much, but back then, PC's and their x86 CPU's just weren't very good choices to begin with, so they were free to go with "proper" 64-bit chips.

 

dont forget linux 64bit distros!

 

Pain in the ass. Using dual AMD64 at work. Those lib64 dirs are a pain. I can't think of a better solution, but it's still a pain. I dont' see any serious performance improvements. I don't think it can move memory around a whole lot faster. It's all peaked out pretty much.
Java 64 bit is unstable, so I'm running 32 bit Java. Some performance anyway - no difference in java 2d demo anyway.
openoffice in 64 bit unusable - it's got so many bugs, just opening a document makes it crash.

This whole 64 bit is super overrated at the moment. I'd say, let all the suckers figure out how to get it all stable. They have the added challenge of having to make all the 64 bit stuff work seamlessly work together with the 32 bit stuff, which is something the cpu can do ok, but it's a matter of sorting out all those libraries and such.
Next year, early, or late perhaps, slap in a 64 bit cpu, and see what the fuzz (not) is all about.

 

After reading this thread it seems pretty clear to me that there is a slight performance increase between the core duo and core 2 duo (~10% for intense processing +64-bit for the future). can anyone tell me if there is a difference in power efficiency aka battery life?

also is there a difference in power efficiency between the core (1,2) duo and the core solo? i just gave away a 2 year old AMD-powered HP laptop that performed well enough for me (email, internet, office, videos and music), and i'm looking to replace it. i like the idea of dual-core processing, but i dont know if i will get any of its benefits. i am thinking of switching to an intel processor for the better battery life, but i dont know which type is best for that.

some current HP options (dv200t):
Intel(R) Core(TM) Solo processor T1350 (1.86 GHz)
Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo processor T2050 (1.60 GHz) +$45.00
Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T5500 (1.66 GHz) +$120.00

 

Core 2 is slightly more power efficient. (Basically, at the same power consumption, it's ~10% faster. At the same performance, it uses ~10% less power... Roughly)

 

Skip the Core Solo, it is a waste of money. I'm not sure of your budget, but by all means spend the extra $45 and get the T2050.
If you plan on upgrading to Windows Vista in the future, the 64-bit T5500 isn't a bad option either. Not that you need all that power though.

 

I have not read this entire thread but multiple people have been claiming that you need a 64bit cpu to fully use windows vista. This is simply wrong.

64 bit support is simply lacking. That and the fact that there is *NOT* a signifigant perforance increase. You do not double your performance. The greatest thing that 64bit processing does it let you address more than 4gb of ram. How many pc's come with XP 64bit ed??? Less than 1% I bet.

There are only a handful of 64bit apps out there (like farcry,half life 2). There will not be a good reason to move to an 64bit os anytime soon. There is software out there that will simply NOT run. Why limit yourself. Have you even run 64bit xp???

32bit windows will be the standard for a long time. By the time 32 bit is obsolete, any hardware purchased today will be too. If you where a software dev, would it make ANY sense to make your software 64bit only? You just eliminated 90% of your customer base. You only need to make sure that it will run under 64bit emulated, not natively.

Also someone mentioned that 32bit will not have integrated HD playback. Well guess what, xp doesn't even have the ability to playback DVDs. You have to have dvd decoding software installed. So you can simplu install 3rd party software for the 32bit version of vista. So this becomes a non issue.

So the bottom line is: if the performance % increase (32bit) is greater than the price increase then it is not worth it.

 

I also agree with this. I ran Vista Beta on my CoreDuo Dell e1505 for about a month with no problems at all. This included the Aero interface. Vista has improved quite a bit since the last time I ran a "beta" version (about a year ago). Microsoft has clearly stated that Vista will be released in both a 32bit and 64bit flavor and also debunked the whole "hd-dvd support in 64bit vista only" rumor that was spreading around the net. HD-DVD support is up to the hardware vendors, not Microsoft.

Core2Duo cpu's are faster and may or may not cost more than the CoreDuo they replace. If you feel that you are being gouged, (which at this early stage in Merom's release you undoubtably are) you should either hold off on your purchase until the prices stabilize or find a vendor that isn't gouging as heavily. One thing you can be sure of is that no company that intends to stay in business for very long is charging less than the market will bear for the C2D.

Also, once Santa Rosa is released, Intel will begin phasing out 667Mhz fsb Merom's and given that it is essentially a drop in replacement for Yonah, thier prices will likely dip for a short period and then rise as the chips become highly sought after by Yonah owners looking to upgrade. (That's my prediction anyway)