Interested in buying a Dell laptop

Associate
Joined
15 Sep 2011
Posts
26
I came across this spec for a Dell laptop and with no technical knowledge wondered what more informed people here thought about it?

My use would be mainly internet browsing, word and EXCEL, Photoshop, storing photos and videos, Genealogy, watching DVDs, e-mails, etc. I'm no gamer!

I'm also not sure about the solid state hard drive! Is it better or worse than normal hard drives?

Thanks for looking

Spec reads:
2nd generation Intel® Core? i7-2640M processor (2.80 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.50 GHz)
O/S - English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
Display - 40 cm(15.6") FHD WLED True-Life (1920x1080) with 1.3 Mega Pixel Integrated Camera
Memory - 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
Hard Drive - 256GB Solid State Hard Drive
Video Card - 2GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 525M Graphics Card with Optimus
Optical Drive - 8x DVD+/-RW Optical Drive
Wireless - Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 (2x2 b/g/n+ Bluetooth Combo Card) (Europe)
 
That will be absolutely awesome for your needs, overkill by a margin. It should last years.

The processor is pretty much top of the line and will be fantastic for photoshop (and way over spec for excel etc) there's plenty of RAM which will be good for photoshop, the graphics card isn't amazing for games, but is fine for your needs, the screen is nice (be aware that it has quite a high number of pixels per inch though, I like this myself) the hard drive is solid state so is faster than a mechanical hard drive (but be aware that it isn't very big).

Be aware that DELL have an outlet store that contains bargains!
 
Last edited:
Thanks Disco Boy

I'll look for the Dell Outlet Store as you suggest, but what do you mean by 'the hard drive is solid state so is faster than a mechanical hard drive (but be aware that it isn't very big)'?

Should the size of a solid state drive be bigger than 265GB? Or is that as big as it gets? And if it is only the size it is, what are the implications for me?
 
Traditional hard drives are mechanical, they consist of a spinning disk that is read a little bit like a CD. Data takes a bit of time to access as a result of this.

Solid state hard drives are the new technology, they are made from flash memory (like a pen drive or an SD card). They aren't mechanical so the time to access data (seek time) is faster. They also have faster constant read and write times (so are faster for copying large files, opening programs etc.) Basically they are faster in every way. They also use less power. They're the future of storage technology.

The flip side of SSDs is that, being newer technology, they cost significantly more per gigabyte of storage. This results in both more expensive and smaller drives. I don't think that DELL will ship SSDs bigger than 256gb (512gb drives cost around £500 each!)

There are only implications for you if you want to store large amounts of data on your internal hard disk. If you are a light user then 256gb should do you just fine, but if you shoot lots of HD videos, or have lots of lossless quality music then they will quickly eat up your space.

Realistically though, laptop hard drives (so that's 2.5" mechanical) don't often come in at over 500gb. So if you are space hungry that probably still won't be enough.

If you do want more space than 256 but get that model then you have a fair few options:
1) some laptops have space for two internal hard disks, look to see if this model has room - it's quite easy to plug another in
2) remove your laptop's optical drive and replace it with an adapter which can fit in another 2.5" hard drive
3) use a usb/ esata external hard drive - this is good because you can get a 2000/3000gb external disk, but bad because it is external, and most big drives require their own power supply (you can get 1tb portable ones powered from usb)
4) use a NAS or a server to store your files at home - this is good because you can have redundancies and backups, but bad because it will take time to transfer files when you want them (speed depends on wifi/ wired network etc) but bad because it's fairly expensive and not portable

pro tip about the DELL outlet: new stuff goes up every day at ~ 3.30 and the best stock goes fast, look at it for a few days to get an idea of prices for each spec (a spreadsheet is best) and go for "certified refurbished" rather than "scratch and dent" because CR laptops are like new (I think they are usually cancelled orders- mine was pristine anyway).
 
Back
Top Bottom