Hello everyone. My girlfriend is looking to buy a laptop for graduate school and beyond. She has had a Dell for the past five years, and is greatly in love with the company and the warranties that they offer. I'm not going to say that I know nothing about computers, but, I really don't know much. Most of the suggestions I was making came off of cnet and other reviewing sites.
Here are the specs and the price that was decided upon.
I've included everything, but there are a few things that I'm concerned about primarily.
First is the video card. Dell gave the option to get either a GeForce GT 540M 2 GB with Optimus or the GeForce GT 525M 1GB graphics with Optimus. On other boards, I was reading that on a laptop, you don't have to get 2 GB because the video card won't even be able to use all of it. That wording may be horrible, but what they said is for the extra price, it is not worth getting in a laptop.
I think I'm pretty sold on using an i5 rather than an i3 or i7, but if someone wanted to sell me either way, I would certainly listen to a sales pitch
The amount of RAM was the basic set, and the DDR3 was the only type offered (I believe that is a motherboard thing?)
In short, I'm not asking for a massive amount of homework, just more of a look over and see if there is anything that seems out of place, or any issues that you've experienced with the hardware in it.
Dell XPS 15
PROCESSOR 2nd generation Intel® Core? i5-2410M processor 2.30 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.90 GHz edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2010
SERVICE PLAN 3 Year Good Service Package
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 525M 1GB graphics with Optimus
MEMORY 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
HARD DRIVE 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Days Trial
HD DISPLAY 15.6 in HD WLED TL (1366x768) with Skype-Certified 2.0MP HD Webcam
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE 8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
WIRELESS + BLUETOOTH Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000
BATTERY OPTIONS 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
SOUND OPTIONS JBL 2.1 Speakers with Waves Maxx Audio 3
Here are the specs and the price that was decided upon.
I've included everything, but there are a few things that I'm concerned about primarily.
First is the video card. Dell gave the option to get either a GeForce GT 540M 2 GB with Optimus or the GeForce GT 525M 1GB graphics with Optimus. On other boards, I was reading that on a laptop, you don't have to get 2 GB because the video card won't even be able to use all of it. That wording may be horrible, but what they said is for the extra price, it is not worth getting in a laptop.
I think I'm pretty sold on using an i5 rather than an i3 or i7, but if someone wanted to sell me either way, I would certainly listen to a sales pitch
The amount of RAM was the basic set, and the DDR3 was the only type offered (I believe that is a motherboard thing?)
In short, I'm not asking for a massive amount of homework, just more of a look over and see if there is anything that seems out of place, or any issues that you've experienced with the hardware in it.
Dell XPS 15
PROCESSOR 2nd generation Intel® Core? i5-2410M processor 2.30 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.90 GHz edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2010
SERVICE PLAN 3 Year Good Service Package
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 525M 1GB graphics with Optimus
MEMORY 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
HARD DRIVE 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Days Trial
HD DISPLAY 15.6 in HD WLED TL (1366x768) with Skype-Certified 2.0MP HD Webcam
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE 8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
WIRELESS + BLUETOOTH Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000
BATTERY OPTIONS 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
SOUND OPTIONS JBL 2.1 Speakers with Waves Maxx Audio 3
