That bloody Dell laptop now £292 (as low as £279!!)-EDITED FIRST POST

Bubba_Shaboo

smsmasters wrote:

^It is possible to download the drivers, etc. I already have a spare windows xp home sp2 cd.

Yeah but it's the challenge of a blag innit?

Bubba©

Bubba_Shaboo

Chuffy wrote:

Did it even come with powerDVD 5.5 installed?

Mine says:

Cineplayer Software DVD Player incl Decoder - Preactivated (No Media)

Bubba©

smsmasters

I think I'm gonna ring to get the free cds anyway. What is the number and what shall I say? hehe

chunter

Bear in mind that the "PCMCiA" slot in the Inspiron is more or less useless.
It's an expresscard slot. And there's a about 10 cards available for it in the whole dang world.

As I found out when trying to install vodaphone 3G GPRS PCMCIA.
Totally and completely incompatible.

SellerXcom

Hi,

I'm considering purchasing the laptop that Dell have on offer.

Does anyone know anything about the screen? I've seen laptop screens that are *very* hard to see in daylight, then I've seen the Sony Vaio Black LCD ones, which are excellent. Does anyone know what they are like?

I'm looking at the £339 one with wireless i-net and dvd writer.

Bubba_Shaboo

SellerXcom wrote:

Hi,

I'm considering purchasing the laptop that Dell have on offer.

Does anyone know anything about the screen? I've seen laptop screens that are *very* hard to see in daylight, then I've seen the Sony Vaio Black LCD ones, which are excellent. Does anyone know what they are like?

I'm looking at the £339 one with wireless i-net and dvd writer.

I've no first hand experience until tomorrow but by all accounts the Dell screen is quite dark, it's certainly not going to be anything like the Sony Black screens but that should be obvious at this price point. This is what Dell have to say:

Choose Screen Resolution...If you plan to use your laptop for...

XGA Internet, email, word processing

XGA or SXGA+ Basic photo editing, PowerPoint, spreadsheets or casual games

SXGA+ or UXGA- A mobile DVD player
- Advanced photo editing or gaming
- Computer aided drafting, graphic design, or video editing

* When a "W" appears before the screen resolution , i.e. WXGA, it denotes a wide screen display.


That's taken from here: http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/learnmore/learnmore.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~id=screen&~lt=popup&~series=all&~tab=other

Worth a read if you're undecided.


HTH


Bubba©

Johntea

This thread has cursed my current 600mhz laptop!

The lid is very loose now meaning I will have to order a new laptop...And this looks like the one

Grr

Kilty_2

What a shame that is eh? :laugh:

buggu

Bubba_Shaboo wrote:

Yeah but it's the challenge of a blag innit?

Bubba©

i would recommend you download winret. Its a small free program which backs up all you program settings, drivers etc as a winzip. You could then eaily burn that to a disc and use it after reinstallling.

Best to test it ist as they have updated it and i havent tested the new versio, hopefully should backup all the drivers like the old version did.

Browntoa

foxyloxy wrote:

There is a Start menu item under "Dell Accessories" titled "Dell Restore CD" - and in theory (and I know folks have had problems with the burn failing half way through) you insert a cd-r and it will burn a Windows XP install disk - this worked perfectly for me.

I then deleted the original c: partition and installed XP onto it using this cd - there was no need for drivers for the wireless card to work and allow internet connection.

Curiously there was no need to enter the Windows code to complete this install - not sure how that worked but very neat.

that option seems not to be there on the new ones ?? only an option to reset drivers

just hunting for it on the laptop now !!