Well my 3.5 year old Inspiron 9100 crapped out and I think its time for a new notebook. That sucker weighed 12 pounds! It was a great at the time because I had basically wanted a portable gaming machine but now the priorities are a little different. I'm looking for something pretty small, in the 12-13" screen size range. Basically I'll be using it for general nerdish computer use. It should be able to play older games (such as BF1942, BF2) but I'm pretty sure most of the models I'll be looking at will be able to. Other main criteria are a nice screen and lots of ram.

The only one I've given significant consideration to so far is the Dell M1310. This thing is sort of stunning and all of the reviews I've read have basically given it high marks, the only real concern being that with the 9 cell battery it comes in at about 5 lbs.

The following M1310 setup comes in at $1,934:

Crimson Red
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7300 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium Edition
Slim and Light LED Display with VGA Webcam
1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Speed: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
128MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8400M GS
Intel® 3945 802.11a/g Mini-card
85Whr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell)
High Definition Audio 2.0

4 gigs of ram can be had on Newegg for about $250. Also, I could save significantly by going with one of the lesser processors:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5250 (2MB cache/1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB) [subtract $175]
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7100 (2MB cache/1.8GHz/800Mhz FSB) [subtract $75].

So my questions are:

1) I have no idea what the performance gain is between the 667 FSB vs. the 800Mhz FSB and the 2mb of Cache vs. the 4mb of Cache. Obviously more is better but would I get more bang for my buck by upgrading my ram? Is upgrading both overkill? Its not like I'm going to be editing video or anything like that but I will have this thing for the next 5 years.

2) Can anyone recommend any other models? The great thing about the Dell is with the XPS they offer 1 year no interest financing which is a pretty attractive offer to me right now. I could go with another Inspiron and basically save about $1k but those, although nice, are a lot larger.

Thanks for any input.