Ok, so I've been in the market for a new laptop for awhile searching around for a good deal and what not and I found a good deal for a Dell E1405 Core Duo 14" laptop. You can find a link for it here:

http://dealnews.com/deals/Dell-Inspiron ... 35253.html

All of the reviews I've found for it say that it's a good buy for the price, but I was wondering if anyone has this kind of laptop, knows anyone who does, or what the thoughts are about it. The only problem is that the deal ends tomorrow, so it's kind of a short notice thing. Any advice that anyone can give me would be great! Thank you!

From the sounds of it, you can't go wrong with the core duo. That looks like a good laptop to me, unless you really want a 15" or bigger screen (which just makes it bigger, heavier, and use more power). Also, the graphics card is probably wimpy if that is a concern. You might consider the brighter lcd upgrade, I'm not sure if it helps a lot, but since you going to be looking at it for a long time, it might worth an extra $16.

Try http://www.notebookreview.com/ I've found them to be very helpfull at looking at Laptops. Especially since you'll read about others with the exact laptop.

I recently bought the e1505 with the 85whr battery, ati x1300, 1.6 core duo, and 1 gig ddr2, and I'm really happy with it. It's good for the ocassional video game, and I get enough battery life for what I do (~1-4 hours depending on what I'm doing). It always seems to stay nice and cool, and when the fan does kick on you can hardly hear it.

A friend of mine got the e1405, and it also looks pretty decent (it doesn't have the stupid white racing stripe around the edge.) They seem to be one of the better deals out there in laptops right now, especially if you keep an eye on http://www.slickdeals.net. I got mine for $750 fully loaded. I was thinking about getting an Asus or something off newegg, but they just couldn't compare in price to performance.

The only thing I'd say, if I had to do it again, is I'd go with a little longer warranty, and maybe go for the 120 gig 7200rpm hard drive. Oh, and plan on reinstalling Windows when you get it, if you don't like 1000 random programs popping up all over the place.

Thanks for the advice! Notebookreview.com helped out a lot. I knew I wanted a smaller laptop 'cause it would be lighter and the graphics card I'm not going to worry about since I won't be doing a lot of gaming or anything like that. Once again, thanks for everything. I went ahead and bought it so we'll see how it works out.

Another good thing about buying Dell is that UMR's IT Walk-In center is a certified Dell service center. So they can help out with hardware upgrades, repair, etc in most cases. (or so I've been told.)

larger HD, yes. 7200 rpm? probably not. i think its a waste of energy and noise in a laptop. they suck up battery life, and unless you're doing a lot of read/writes which i doubt... its unnecessary to go for the faster one. they provide relatively little performance boost, but shoot holes in the battery. plus they cost quite a bit more.

cost = (-1)
slight performance = (~0 +.001)
battery loss = (-1)

dont go for it.

I thought 100GB is the limit right now for 7200rpm 2.5" harddrives???

Yeah I think it actually is. I got a little excited earlier, I knew it was bigger than the 7200 60gb I have now.

meh. the point of my complaining had little to do with size. it had more to do with speed. my post didnt even mention the 120gb HD. i only said -

Large HD? Yes.
7200 RPM? No.

Get a large Hard drive but not one that spins at 7200rpm.