The Dells normally come within a week of order. That's been my experience with quite a few of them.

www.delloutlet.com

That's where I got the labtop I am typing on right now. Love the thing, has never missed a beat in the year and a half I have owned it. Got it for college Latitude, XP, 17 inch screen. I am looking for almost the same exact thing minus now I want a 12 inch screen. I bring this thing with me to every class, and the 17 inch screen really is a nusance.

I am tying this on a 17" notebook. It is way too big to haul around. I am also looking for a smaller one.

If the notebook is going to sit at your house most of the time - then go for a big screen and full sized keypad.

If you plan on carrying it around, go small.

Tenative order placed: I know, I know Vista bad:D I can always load up my copy of XP if I hate it.

XPS M1530

* XPS M1530 Laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)
* Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate


Operating System
Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate
Memory
3 GB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz (2 DIMMs)
Hard Disk Drive200 GB Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive 9.5MM (7200)
Video 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GTSoftware Upgrade
Microsoft Works 8.5Media Bay
8X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability

Len that will be just fine. The 3Gb of ram will support Vista plenty.

Len, excellent choice! Since I have the sister product, feel free to PM me with questions.

Thanks Hal, your PM put that choice over the top. Great price too:D

Nice numbers on that, it should run anything you throw at it.

Be careful of wide screens. 15.4 is common wide screen size. They are nice, but make sure it will fit in your briefcase/laptop bag. Sometimes they don't. Also, the wide ones can be a challenge on airplanes.

Have fun!

Thanks, I'm replacing a 15.4 wide. I almost went 13.3 but I know I haven't been unhappy with the 15.4 so why risk it.

Weird! My Dell of 6 years' vintage just had its HDD crap out last Friday. It was a refurb and served me well!

I just ordered an M1530 -- 2.4G/800 Core 2 Duo, 4MB 667 DDR, 8X DVD R/W DL, 250GB HDD, 256M GeForce 8600, 15.4" WXGA and 9-cell battery (the most important part, IMHO) Bluetooth, yadda yadda yadda. It's Vista Home Premium, but I'll try to deal. If not, I'll load XP.

All-in (tax & ship) $1250. More than I wanted to spend, but if it gives me even 5 years, I'll be happy.

Have fun!



JP

As Mule already mentioned for previous Windoz users Vista will take some getting used to. Access to settings and default window behaviors are slightly changed. It took me a day/two to get comfortable but so far it has been a pleasant experience.

I've been messing around with my *new* G5 Power Mac that has OS X 10.5 loaded. Pretty nice OS but honestly it's not all that different to my nicely setup XP work machine and ~ == to Vista as far as pretty/slick UI stuff.

Bad piece. When you get it let us know. Set up & utils are the key to being happy w/ Vista. Uninstall McAffee or Nortoon & install Avast or AVG ASAP. A free util called combofix is super bad, as is Malwarebytes (also free). Turn off user access controls as it will be a constant annoyance. Enjoy!