Choosing a Dell laptop

Alright, so I'm actually within the means to buy a laptop. I'm trying to keep it at $1,300 max. I have a 17% discount from my employer that will help a lot.

I'm looking for something that could let me get by running VMWare with 2 OS's running on top of my main. I'm not looking for anything to game or watch blu-rays, but mostly productivity and VMware.

Any thoughts or recommendations. I'm trying to stick with Dell since I have the 17%, fyi.

Here's what I've specced so far:

I'd bump the RAM as high as it can go if you're going to be running multiple OS's.

4GB is the max right now :\

Why bother with Vista Ultimate? My wife has that same laptop with Home Basic, and the 2ghz Core 2 Duo, and with the 2 year warranty we only spent $850 shipped. For that amount of money you could easily get an XPS. In fact my friend just bought her husband the 15" XPS with a 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 8600GT, etc for less than what you're spending.

Here we go, more for less!

EDIT: With the 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo installed it raises the price to $1,239. Still less than the 1525 and you get an Nvidia 8600GT, and expandability up to 8GB of ram.

Wow, thanks MSP. Looks like a good build. I'm gonna take a closer look at that model.

If I were buying a Dell laptop for myself, that would be the one.

Hopefully you're buying it through your employer so you get a better customer service experience!

Well, I placed my order today and big thanks to MSP for showing me that build. I took the same build but upped the processor to 2.4Ghz/3MB

Fantastic, you're going to love it. That's the thing with mid-range laptops, sometimes if you start with the base model and try to upgrade it ends up costing more. The XPS has all sorts of other little stuff going for it, such as the barrel hinges, the wireless remote, firewire, etc.

Why didn't you get a 7200 RPM HDD? 5400 is ssllllooooww.

I thought about that but I want to see how the 5400 performs. Also, the 7200 models come in smaller sizes.

I would have done the same frankly. In fact that's what I'm doing now - biding my time with my 5400RPM and saving my pennies for a SSD drive.

On my Macbook 5400 and 7200 was like night and day when I upgraded.

You might want to get that 7200rpm drive. See what it's like with 2 VM's and the host OS running, and it might be unbearable. Depending on what's running in the VMs, if it's anything that taxes disk I/O, you'll be begging for that 7200rpm drive.

Yeah, you can always get a small, inexpensive 7200 RPM HDD and an external enclosure for you current one.

I called Dell sales to ask if I Could change the hard drive to a 7200RPM but they said the configuration's locked. I'd have to cancel and re-place my order. So I told them don't worry about it.

I figured I'll hang with a 5400RPM and if I'm bothered by the speed, I'll just upgrade. No biggie.

Yeah, don't sweat it Bear. You can get a 7200RPM drive cheaper on your own anyway, and we can help you image from the old drive to the new when the time comes. And besides, the drive in that thing will suit you just fine. I'm working on my work laptop right now (Dell Precision M4300) and the 5400RPM drive is fine. Plus it's quieter and consumes less power.