Laptop specs comparison, I need some help here..

Hey people

I'm seriously contemplating buying a laptop... I've found 2 that I rather like but there seems to be a bit of a problem ... they bother differ quite a bit on some key specs...


laptop #1
80gb HDD
Mobile A64 3400+
1gb Ram
9700 with dedicated 64mb Vram

laptop #2
Turion ML-30 (I assume that would be the same as a mobile 3000+?)
512MB Ram
80gb HDD
X700 with 128mb Vram

The rest are pretty much the same with wireless etc.. Now, I'm torn between these 2 as they are pretty much what I want and are within my range.
Now my 2 questions are this:
1) If you were going to buy one of those if yuo were not going to peform any upgrades on the laptop what so ever?

2) If you were going to mabye spend a bit more on updating it down the line which would you get?

Will mostly be used for mobile geeking, Dawn of War, maybe a bit of q4 there on there (yes I know, I don't mind using low detail)

Out of those 2, option 2 for sure. Better graphics, and the Turion is designed for mobile and has better thermal and power management than the 3400. What is your price range out of curiosity? Maybe able to point you to something altogether better.

Cool thanks for the assistance. But I'm guessing around the 2.5k mark. Bare in mind those 2 cost ~2.5k including gst (go NZ currency eh?)

Option 3

inspiron 9300
-pentium m has equal peformance to turion clock for clock
-dual channell DDR 2 533mhz memmory
-geforce go 6800 256 Mb of graphics dedicated memmory
-choice of 60Gb or 80Gb 7.2k RPM HD or 40,60,80,100Gb 5.4k RPM HD
-built in mini subwoofer
~$1.8k on sale or about $1.4k on a good deal

option 4
xps m170
same as inspiron 9300 except...
-comes in black chassis
-geforce go 7800
-has programmable led's that shine in upto 16 different colors...
-$2.3k on sale... $2.1k on a good deal...



any 533mhz pentium-m system is pinmoddable by buying a 400mhz processor off of ebay thus putting a 400mhz FSB chip in a 533mhz system will allow for a nice 33% overclock... just look at my sig for an example of a sweet i9300 system (also you could click the link which will take you to a post about all my mods I have done to it )

by the way I have invested less than $1600 in this system...

Good suggestion ozzlo but remember, he is in New Zealand... The Dell's might be more expensive over there... not sure. I love my 9300 BTW

yeah, you'd probably be looking at 4.5k for that dell over here

lol... I failed an english class once for not being able to be a good critical thinker....
I looked into DELL: NEW ZELAND and...
2,878.00 NZD = 1,954.40 USD
New Zealand Dollars = united States Dollars

see that's not that bad... only a couple hundred higher...

true, true. We shall see I guess.. might look into dell.. I've heard bad things about the customers service though

I would say Dell is your best bet, but that's from an US customer, so there's no way to know what they are like in NZ.

just an idea but would it be cheaper if you go with dell to have some one in the USA buy it and ship it over there

I dunno, depends on how much I get charged at customs for GST etc... plus unless its global warrenty its going to be a pain :S