quote:
Originally posted by RebelSean
I'm looking into buying a laptop, and I've been thinking about going with Dell. Does anyone personally own a dell that can give me some advice before I buy one? I own a Dell PC and it's perfect for my needs 
.
First decide what your laptop should include and what the specs need to be.
Decide what is important to you: graphics, disk storage, cpu, connectivity, external ports, ... on what should the emphasize be on (eg: for what is your laptop going to be used the most and what is only secondary or nice-to-have-too).
Think about stuff like: do I need a serial RS232 port? Are 2 USB ports sufficient or do I need more? Can I do something with a PCMCIA port? Do I need a SVGA output? VGA port? Does it support dual view or only clone view? Do I need extra buttons to toggle the sound, start applications, etc? Do I need a webcam? Do I need a dedicated keypad? And even: what's the maximum wide my laptop can be, as there are laptops which are as big as your whole desktop... What is the max weight they can be (factor which is quite often forgotten). Does the touchpad have a seperate scroll area or not. Does the laptop have a touchstick (the small button like stick in the middle of the keyboard). Is the laptop going to travel with you all the time, or just sporadic... etc...
Second, decide in what price range you want to stay. Then you can look at several brands and compare their offers...
I would never buy a laptop just by brand, I would buy a laptop (or anything for that matter) depending on the specs...
Dell isn't bad. It also isn't uber-good. It is just yet another brand laptop. They have good laptops and shitty laptops, like any other brand. (though I find them usually bigger/bulkier than compareable brands; it's like they waste more space
).
Advantage for going for such brands as Dell, HP, etc is that those brands are highly commercial brands; each PC store has one on offer, so you could often find good deals in one shop or the other.
(then again, you can order any brand you like from anywhere in the world these days in almost any shop, it just takes a few days longer for a laptop to be ordered (within 3 days I had my Fijutsi laptop which isn't available in any shop and needed to be ordered directly from wherever they make them)).
With lots of searching and patients you should find the laptop you want with the specs you want in roughly the pricerange you want. But you need to be patient and look around a lot and compare a hell of a lot of specs and brands... unless you're lucky of course
... (It took me a few months to find the one I wanted)
/ 
