Dell Inspiron 6000 ??

Okay, my notebook PC (Linux Thinkpad) is old and clunky, and I'm thinking of finally joining the 21st century of notebooks with ACPI that don't suspend/resume to RAM under Linux.

Why? I want more speed and more RAM (aka even more speed).

Dell has sent me a coupon for 30% off the web price on several of their models, including the Inspiron 6000 with UWUXGA (1920x1200) 15" displays -- as well as the 9300 with a 17" version of that display.

Any caveats come to mind from anyone out there? The price is excellent for the I6000 models.. I can get 1.86GHz P-M w/ATI-128MB (ugh, but it does work with X11) and 2GB of SDRAM for around US$2000 or so after taxes here.

Looks good to me, apart from giving up suspend/resume to/from RAM under Linux (have to use "software suspend" to disk instead).

??

I just received an Inspiron 6000 yesterday (I ordered it when they were doing 34% off last week). I haven't had much time to mess with it, but I must say, that screen is so very sweet! I got mine with the Pentium M 760 (2GHz), 1 GB RAM, and the 128 MB X300. I played a bit of Battlefield Vietnam tonight, and it ran pretty smoothly. The only weird thing about the 6000 is the white trim. It just looks wrong to me! I got the 9 cell battery, and with the display at the default brightness Windows shows about 6 hour battery life. If you have any other questions about it I will try to answer them

The only "warning" I have heard out there was to hold off on the first models of this next gen of Centrino. But they (Tom's Hardware) were reccomending to get old Centrino notebooks as they should be going down in price.

That seems like a decent deal. Be warned that the quality of a thinkpad is much higher than any dell you're going to get. That said, the dell will probably cost half as much, so it's definitly a trade off. If someone else is paying, always spring for the thinkpad.

I didn't realize the 6000 had decent screens, when I looked at it when it came out it had WXGA as the only "option" so I never gave it a seccond look.

Make sure to price it without the ram and see what buying the ram at newegg or your equivalent would cost. I suspect you'll come out ahead. Dell recently had a couple of $750 off $1500 coupons, which was a good deal if you were sticking with a low end system. With a high end system, the percentage off coupons can be better. However, an emailed 30% off isn't actually much for dell, especially when you consider that all the prices listed on the home site are 20% off already at the moment, and percentages don't stack. In addition to the memory, keep in mind that anything you add is overpriced. An 80GB laptop hard drive costs $115, dell wants $100 to upgrade from a 40 to a 80. Most people around here have an empeg that wouldn't mind an extra 40GB for $15. In the same vein, it costs $99 to upgrade to the high capacity battery, and $129 to buy the high capacity battery as a seccond one. $30 for the low capacity battery seems like a good deal.

I've attached the system I think you're configuring. It came out to $2100. The coupon code NSHFXB?R6$BSD2 will get you $750 off, for a total of $1350. You could save $100 on the dvd burner or the extra battery. Add $400 in newegg memory, and you're all set for $1750 plus tax. If you of all people need a decent hard drive, pick up a 7k60 for $150 or so.

Anyways, you're still in the same ballpark either way. The dell pricing game is a complex one, and it's rigged so that the house always wins.

Matthew

I forgot to mention bensbargains.net is a good site to keep with the various deals if you don't want to delve into the deal forums.

Matthew

Thanks for the great Dell tutorial! The system I was looking at had 2GB of DRAM rather than 256MB, and also had bluetooth, big battery, and other goodies, all at the 30% discount. But apples and oranges abound in the comparisms, for sure!

Now I've moved upscale: Dell Inspiron 9300, 1920x1200 17" LCD, ATI-128MB, CD/DVD+-RW(8X) dual-layer, 100GB HD, 2GB RAM, 2GHz P-M-760, Bluetooth, Intel Wifi a/b/g, (software: XP-Home+MediaPack and other windows goodies I'll not be using), etc..

Specs attached, cost is CAD$3168.20 + tax, shipping is free.

Cheers

Of course, this box has no serial ports.. which I need.

So.. anyone know of a nice serial-to-bluetooth adapter on the cheap? Self powered would be nice. Then I could just plug that into my empeg dock, and get a wireless console connection to the new Dell.

I'll also probably pick up a USB-serial dongle as a secondary connection for some of the embedded machines I need to connect to around here.

Thanks!

deluo.com has one which is pl2303 based and under $20 (it's either $10 or $15); kernel has a driver for it. self powered.

As to this:
So.. anyone know of a nice serial-to-bluetooth adapter on the cheap?

I dunno. I suspect what I want is more involved than what you need. I want to do dialup networking, I want the empeg to connect to a phone and get a ppp connection, basically.

I'd really hesitate to purchase a 17" portable desktop unless you've seen one in person, really want one, and don't plan to travel with it. The 9300 weighs nearly 8lbs and is 1.6 inches tall. You can get the same resolution screen and the same processor in the 6000.

Matthew

Yeah, the size might be a bit BIG.

But the published dimensions are only about 0.15" thicker than the 6000 (or my current Thinkpad A21p), 0.8" deeper (front to back), and about 1.5" wider than the 6000 (2.5" wider than my A21p). Definitely large, but worth every gram for that 17" display.

I have seen a 17" Dell notebook before, and it definitely seemed larger than the measurements would indicate, though. HUGE comes to mind.

It will, however, fit into my existing (Dell, actually) nylon carry case.

It just seems somewhat of a waste to have 1920x1200 on a display roughly the same size as my existing 1600x1200 15" panel.. I'd never see all of those extra beautiful pixels on 15.4", and just end up using larger fonts to compensate. But on a 17" panel, I think it should end up with a similar actual pixel size as my 1600x1200 machine.

I haven't hit the "buy" button yet, as I'm still working through various usage/travel scenarios in my mind to make sure all will be fine. Mmmm...

Cheers!

Quote:
So.. anyone know of a nice serial-to-bluetooth adapter on the cheap? Self powered would be nice. Then I could just plug that into my empeg dock, and get a wireless console connection to the new Dell.

I'm waiting on delivery of this one. I'll let you know how it works with the Empeg. And with the Palm.