OT - Laptop Recommendations

[Mark Phillips]

My current Dell Latitude C640 has died, so I am in the market for a new laptop. I am looking at either a refurbished Dell latitude D830 or a new Dell Studio 1555. Both are about the same price ~$700.
 
The Studio 1555
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6600 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
15.6” High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife™ and Camera
8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
4GB2 Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
Speed: 500GB3 SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) with Free Fall Sensor
512MB4 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
McAfee SecurityCenter, 15-Months
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 802.11agn Half Mini-Card
56 Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
 
The Dell Latitiude 830
Intel® Core™ Duo processor
L1 cache 64 KB (internal)
L2 cache 2 MB (on die)
External bus frequency 800 MHz
System chipset Intel® 965GM and 965PM
Data bus width 64 bits
DRAM bus width 64 bits
Processor address bus width 36 bits
CardBus controller OZ711
Memory module capacities 2GB (max 4GB)
Memory type 533/667 DDRII SDRAM
Network adapter 1-GB Ethernet LAN on system board
Graphics - nVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M or nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, Intel GM965
WXGA, WSXGA+, or WUXGA
6-cell lithium-ion battery 56 WHr
 
I will be running Debian testing, windows XP/7 as a vm. Mostly used for Java, Python, web development, and all the normal work processing, email stuff, and video/audio editing. This is my main workstation, so I need some degree of portability.
 
I am leaning towards the Latitude only because I have read some reviews of the Studio 1555, and the reviews dinged it for a flimsy case. Latitudes are know to have solid frames.
 
Thanks for your laptop ideas!
 
Mark

[green-9]

Mark Phillips wrote at 2009-11-10 15:15 -0600:
>    Thanks for your laptop ideas!

I'm not sure what you are wanting here, but I own a ThinkPad and would
recommend considering those if you have not yet.  Linux support is good and
somehow they don't have the cheap feel of many cheaper laptops.