I take pride that i build my own PCs to my specs.
My latest desktop I built when I was laid off from Boeing back in 2002.
At the time it was about the fastest out there, and since getting back to Boeing I have breathed more life into it.

Right now it sits as:
2.4 c Intel CPU (can OC it to 3.12 no problems heatwise)
2 GB Corsair RAM
EVGA 256 MB 7800 AGP video card (about the last of the best AGP cards out there)
Asus P4P800 mobo
Creative Audigy ZS 2 soundcard
SATA 160 GB D drive
PATA 80 GB D drive
USB 200 GB hard drive, all of the these are Western Digital.

It plays most games quite well, however with UT III just now released I have to scale back from running games at 1680x1050 to 1024x768 for this new game.

I am going to build a screamer of a gaming rig.

However, this post is about a laptop.
I need just a basic Dell to replace my old Fujitsu (time to retire that old thing) that has Windows 98 on it.
The laptop will only be for surfing from the living room, and for monitoring the web admin panel of Unreal Tournament III as soon as Epic releases patch number 2 which will contain the admin panel.

This lets you monitor the game running on your server and to be able to boot hackers and cheats, and switch game styles and maps from it without having to go into the game.

My friend Andy and I just got UT III loaded up on his Counter Strike Source server Saturday, and I will be doing a major portion of the web admining of it.

What model of Dell would be good for just basic surfing and stuff with at least a 15" or better screen?
I would want a DVD drive with it, but no fancy vid or audio card.
Built in would do just fine.

TIA,

 

Perhaps a little off topic Corey but what do you think of those AMD Turion 64 bit chips... If/when I get a new 'puter I'm thinking of going to one of them to get the true 64bit set up as oppoesed to a duo-core intel...

 

You mean for gaming?
If for gaming, right now the Intel Extreme Dual Core from reading the magazines is the way to go.
They have surpassed AMD for gaming.

I build all of my builds pretty much for the latest games out and future games.

Epic (creator of the Unreal Tournament franchise) is recommending the Intel Dual Core.

 

I haven't been keeping up with all the comparative specs between intel and AMD, but keep in mind that even if you buy a 64 bit processor, it will actually run in 32 bit mode (and possibly slower) unless you install a 64 bit OS, like Windows XP Pro 64 bit.

 

I think I found a Dell, the XPS 1530

The above has a separate video card so vids or even an easy game should look better than the Inspiron line below which has video built in and uses part of the 2 GB of RAM for shared video.

But for the same price or less than the XPS ones, you can get an Inspiron with a 17" widescreen compared to the XPs 15.4 hi def widescreen.

They also have the Inspiron line in different configurations.
http://www.dell.com/content/products...=19&l=en&s=dhs

Anyone have any experience with either of these?
I see they come with Vista, not really my choice of OS, I would prefer XP Pro.

Both the XPS and Inspiron I am looking at come with 2 GB or RAM.

 

Another question on hard drives for the laptops.
One Dell Inspiron with a 17" wide screen I am looking at comes with this:
Hard Drive
Size: 250GB3 SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)

In the area where you can reconfigure your purchase you can substitute for a smaller SATA drive around 160 GB which is fine with me, and it ups the speed to 7200 RPM.
Is that a better choice for the laptop, or is the 5400 RPM speed OK for a laptop.

Will not be using this for gaming really, that is what my desktop is for.

 

The higher RPM on a laptop hard drive will suck the battery faster. For what you want to do with your laptop a 5400RPM drive will do just fine.

Merry Christmas Corey!

 

Thanks Matt, and Merry Christmas to you to.

I think I will stick with the home office 17" Inspiron, the one on the far right, model number 1720.

I will add a few things like a Logitech wireless minimouse, as I do not care for touchpads.
Even when I used my old Fujitsu here I had a MS Intellimouse (with cord) hooked up to it.

Also I will have them leave off the Trend Micro antivirus as I run AVG here at home.

Another advantage to having the laptop besides managing the UT III server is I can surf from the living room if I want to and not jump out of my recliner during commercials and come into the bedroom here and check for updates on forums, ect.

Now that I finally stepped upto the wireless age, it will be nice to not have a laptop tethered down with a long cat 5 cable.
I tired surfing that way before, it was a pain with the cable hanging off the side of the old Fujitsu worrying about yanking on it or tripping over it.

 

Once you are wireless and have a laptop and desktop you never want to go back to just a desktop again. Having a laptop on your lap as you watch tv will really change the way you watch. You'll find yourself looking up things that you usually forget about by the end of the show/movie. I usually end up paying more attention to the computer and the tv turns into background noise. lol

 

I will still be using the desktop to manage file uploads for the forum and my personal website, and for gaming of course, and my mail Outlook client.
Also the desktop is my PVR, it has two TV tuner cards in it which can record two shows at the same time, and I play them back via cable to the TV set out in the living room.

I can add a USB TV tuner to the laptop in the future if I want to use it for doing so too.

Although I can use Comcast's web based mail to check the mail too, and it leaves it on the server and will still download to my desktop via Outlook 2003.

Well, here is the build, let me know what you think of it.

The only thing I changed was upping the dual core from a 1.5 to a 2.0, added a 128 MB NVIDIA 8400 M GS video card, and a Logitech black wireless mouse.

This is going to be risky since it has Vista on it.
I like XP Pro, and have heard a lot of horror stories with Vista.

 

That will be a very nice computer. Should last you for quite some time. Why don't you wipe the drive and put XP back on it? That's what I keep hearing people are doing now.

Even better yet, get a MacBook Pro, and for your Windows needs put Parallels on it with XP Pro.
Haha, sorry, I am a Mac guy after all.

 

He he, maybe one of these days, but I am so use to Windows and having built a few PCs from scratch loading up the OS is a cinch.

I may even hold off for awhile now on building a super duper gaming PC to replace my current one, at least until spring perhaps, we shall see.
It plays the new Unreal Tournament fine, even at max res of 1680x1050 in the game.

The world details are not maxed out like I can do in Unreal Tournament 2004, but the game still looks great and runs fast.

I really get into gaming during the winter months as it is to cold to mod on the rig, and up where I like to wheel it is several feet of snow right now.
Not to say that a snow run will not be to far away though...