Laptop for Astrophotography

256 isn't much, I'd imagne that XP on its own will be slow with that.

XP desires 64MB of RAM, but will double that if it can!

David,
your Inspiron looks alright for the price, but even with a Centrino at 1.7GHz, you won't be able to load that many applications on it - especially with only 256MB of RAM. I would quickly recommend doubling the memory in the package. You're getting a good deal for the price already, compared to your highstreet prices (by the way, does that price include VAT and delivery etc? Don't get caught out!).

Check to see what your 6 cell battery lasts for. It says its a 56Watts per hour battery... Your machine probably needs 50 Watts an hour, and the total stored on the battery could be e.g. 130Watts - CHECK IT OUT!

With Dell, you get what you pay for. And I will not buy a Dell, unless it was well over €1,000!

Seanie.

hmmm, that's a great price.

It doesn't say which Pentium M it is but it does have the 2mb cache so performance and battery life will be exceptional compared to a perntium 4 processor (should easily outperform a 2.66GHz mobile pentium 4).

But you really need more RAM. XP will eat most of that 256MB and photoshop really needs 512MB to be anywhere near useful. I'd pick up a 512MB Crucial (as Albert also recommended) Sodimm for about 70 euro as far as I remember. They are cheap, but they make high quality memory (I have Crucial in a number of machines, never had a problem). That would give you 768MB, which will increase your performance no end, particularly on image editors.

Just check with Dell that you have a free memory slot and not 2x128mb in there.

Hope that helps,

Trev

Just as an update....
I ended up getting this one...

Dell Lattitude D510
Intel® Pentium® Centrino M Processor 1.70 GHz
512MB RAM
40GB Hard Drive
6 Cell 56Whr Primary Battery
15'' LCD
Windows XP Pro.
Photoshop C5

€500

:lol: