I'm looking at purchasing a laptop, in particularly the Dell Inspiron 1520 or the Dell Inspiron 1720. I was wondering when it comes to memory would you recommend the 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz or 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz? I'll mainly be using the laptop to play media applications (i.e. play movies, music, etc.) and play/program games. I know the 4GB would be better in general but it costs $800 more than the 2 GB which is why I'm wondering if it's worth it for what I want to do with the laptop. [Edited by - TKE Super Dave on August 1, 2007 1:32:41 PM]

What else is different between the two? If you are mostly just going to be watching movies, you don't even really need 512 megabytes of ram.


If it is mostly the ram that is different (and not the mother board which lets one have 4gb rather than limited to 2) then you can buy the cheaper one and upgrade the ram yourself for far less than $800.

I wouldn't bother with more than 2gb right now, but plan to upgrade in a year or two.

I've had the Small Business Side of the 1720, known as the Vostro 1700, for a few days now. I absolutely love it. There isn't really much of a reason to go for the 4GB IMO unless you intend for it to be a complete desktop replacement. And only then if you intend on doing extremely intensive applications such as 3D Rendering using a professional modeling/rendering package.

Might I also suggest you look into the Vostro series as they can have up to a 8600M GT GeForce card, and not just the Intel Integrated or ATI 1100 Express. Also, and this may also apply to the Inspiron series these days, during the ordering process I was able to request no third party software be installed. So I received my laptop with only Windows and the Dell Drivers installed.

Quote: Original post by Running_Wolf
There isn't really much of a reason to go for the 4GB IMO unless you intend for it to be a complete desktop replacement. And only then if you intend on doing extremely intensive applications such as 3D Rendering using a professional modeling/rendering package.

I do not own a desktop computer at all and do not plan on buying one anytime in the near future, so this will be my primary computer. I do plan on using the Torque game engine or/and other similiar type game engines depending on the projects I'm working on.

As for upgrading myself, with a laptop and with my lack of hardware experience, that really isn't an option. Otherwise I'd totally agree.

They both come with the different Ram, so it's not really a difference between the two. Matter of fact other than screen size, I really haven't found a difference between the two.