Would a Dell Inspiron XPS M170 be worth getting now?

[slambo69]

I have a 3 year old Acer 7104. It has a 17" screen which is brilliant, but a really sucky integrated graphics card. Im a gamer at heart, but dont want anything extreme, like the new gaming laptops for £1500.

I was looking at just a new laptop for about £700, but came across this Dell. Its quite old, but it will still play the games I want it to. Right now my laptop stuggles so much with big battles on Rome total war and wont even run battlefield 2.

I did a forum search and have read some bad things about the reliability of the gfx card. Also, it would be a refurbished one I'm looking at of an auction site.

Any opinions welcome.

 

[slambo69]

Thanks for your reply, its sad to hear about more failures. Yes it has to be a laptop, Im studying abroad and working abroad elswehere in the summer so a desktop would be too impractical. How I miss my desktop at home...

It would be about £500 including delivery for a refurbished one but I would be tempted by a warranty also. Im not too bothered about upgradeability due to access to a 360 for the latest games. If it runs battlefield 2 OK then it will be ok for my other games, as all my favourite games are 2006 or before.

My laptop knowledge is non existent, 3 years ago I just wanted a big screen and assumed it would be ok with games, but then the xbox 360 took me away from it but now its come back to haunt me.

Im open to other recommendations as well.

 

[slambo69]

The big screen bothered me when I was first getting one, but the 15.4" would be ok, especially if it was such a powerful laptop.

Would you recommend a refurbed m1530 for about £500 or do you thinkI could buy new for that price?

Oh another reason for the m170 would be because of windows XP, im not too excited about vista and would prefer xp if possible.

 

[slambo69]

I had a quick browse, but the prices are almost the same as new, or at least not more than 10%. Its still about £650, factoring in delivery it could be a bit much for me.

It looks like a really good laptop, but Im still considering the m170 refurb with something like a 3 year warranty. The games I want to play are the old Call of duty's, battlefield 2 and the ones before and I love rainbow six ravenshield.

I know they are all really old, but its annoying that I cant even play them on my laptop.

The one that originally caught my eye (m170) has 2.13 GHz, nvidia geforce 7800 256mb and 2GB of ram(which I might upgrade). Adding it up, this would cost about £650 for the laptop, 3 years warranty and delivery to the czech republic.

I shall investigate the 1530 more though.

Thank you all for yout info so far, I'd be lost without it!