Please give me some advice..

[torvalds]

I want to buy a laptop but every time I go to actually buy the damn thing I wonder if im choosing the right hardware. So can someone that knows about these things PLEASE advise me. The laptop is a dell inspiron 9300 and I will be using it for office software, browsing net, video editing (some but not ALL the time, and I would like to be able to play games in bed if I get sick

Which should I pick from these..

Screen:
17" UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WXGA+ (1440 x 900) TFT Display
or
17" UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WUXGA (1920 x 1200) Display with TrueLife™

Hard Drive:
60GB (5.400rpm) IDE Hard Drive
or
60GB (7.200rpm) IDE Hard Drive

CPU:
Intel ®Pentium ®M Processor 740 (1.73 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)
or
Intel ®Pentium ®M Processor 750 (1.86 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)
or
Intel®Pentium® M Processor 760 (2.0 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)

Its easy to say get the most expsenive/fastest out of these but will I see much difference going from one to the other?

Thanks greatly if you can help. Dell only have the offer on for one more day and I just cant figure out whats best (

 

[Donk3y]

I prefer the TrueBrite WUXGA screen. The extra real estate of having 1920x1200 res is nice for me. The high gloss finish of the TrueBrite makes colors very vivid. This is going to be more of a personal preference thing though.


The 7200 RPM drive is definately worth the extra cash in my opinion. Much better load times and drive performance in general.


I went with the 1.73Ghz in my 9300. I did not see the extra cash being worth a few 100MHz. The 1.73 performs just fine for gaming and general use in my own experience.

 

[BillLeeLee]

A 7200 RPM drive will help with some disk access, so I recommend that.

Screen size and native resolution is really a personal preference. I always want as high resolution as I can get, so I'd go with WUXGA. WXGA+ on a 17 inch LCD is not enough space for me. TrueLife is the glossy screen right? Yeah, I'd want that too.

As for CPU speed - well, back when I bought my current notebook, the max speed of the Pentium M processors was 2 Ghz (Dothan Core). I was choosing between 1.8 Ghz and 2.0 Ghz, but the difference in price was like $300 for 200 Mhz of clock speed, so I decided to save my wallet undue stress. I'd recommend going for the best processor you can get that doesn't have a giant premium over a slightly slower choice.