USA has competition to Dell, take advantage of it :p

I'd go with something like this: http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Battalion_101_W870CU_Gaming_Laptop and do the $9 RAM upgrade to have it single slot, and the $24 hard drive upgrade to have a 7200rpm drive and 500GB, seems comparable to the specs of the machine listed, wonder how different the price is

If you're dead set on the Dell you could look up benchmarks of the different processors to see just how different they are(for my needs I know the lowest i7 would be great, but I'm not sure how much your needs differ from mine)

Quote: Original post by cyansoft
I've found that, by far, the best investment you can make when making a new computer(or upgrading, for that matter) is to purchase an SSD drive. Install the OS, compiler, and your most common tools on that, along with your project's source files. Use your regular HDD for your stuff that doesn't need to be ultra fast, such as your music, documents, and archives.

I've put this one in my aging machine at work. A 1 million line C# project with 70 sub-projects now compiles under 4 minutes compared to 25. Unit testing (with a full SQL Server database restore between of the 2700 tests) now takes 90 minutes opposed to 8 and 1/2 hours.

Go with the i5 processor and use the money saved to buy an SSD and maybe some more RAM. You won't regret it.

The sager notebooks site listed above had a SSD option, and was probably more value/$ than the alienware depending on what size you go for.

IMO it's better to get a development tower and an everything laptop. For the same $2000 bucks you can get a PC as good as anything out there (providing you know how to use a screw driver) and a really solid laptop that will still run nearly any game you throw at it and be fine for most moderate/light work.

Don't forget about the Alienware m11x either, it's a lot cheaper than the rest of the M1Xx for comparable power, although note that it's in a Netbook form factor (Which may or may not be what you're after).

Also note that you can get ones with better specs than the one I linked, that was just the first one I found. :P

Quote: Original post by PlayfulPuppy
Don't forget about the Alienware m11x either, it's a lot cheaper than the rest of the M1Xx for comparable power, although note that it's in a Netbook form factor (Which may or may not be what you're after).

Also note that you can get ones with better specs than the one I linked, that was just the first one I found. :P

after looking at this, being able to change the color of the lighting on the different parts of your computer may be worth $1000...

I don't even think I'd need games if I had that.