Laptop with 17" screen?

mbriody

For my daughter, looking for something with 17" screen, at least 250GB, bluetooth, webcam, wireless, 3Gb RAM, free upgrade to Win 7.

Nice to have (would pay extra for): pre-N wireless, gigabit ethernet, fingeprint read, HDMI

Closest so far is a Dell Inspiron but haven't had good experiences with four Dell laptops to date so something else would be godd. Any bargains spotted out there?

Voyager2002

Visit the small business part of the Dell website, and check out the Vostro 1710. I use its predecessor (the 1700) and have had many good experiences with it. I think that Dell try harder with the models made for businesses like the Vostro and Latitude than with the mass-market Inspiron.

Enterprise_1701C

I agree with the Vostro, also check out another point on it. I believe, though I can't recall where I read it on their website, that the keyboards are spillproof. A very useful extra with teenagers! We bought our son one of these some time ago.

As for your poor experiences with Dell, I have an Inspiron 5150 that is 5 years old and still going after being used every day! OK, it's slow, and the battery is going, but the machine is still perfectly OK (that said, I would not want to play a fast-paced game on it!)

Found it, click through to small business laptops and it says under the Vostro "sealed keyboard". Designed to protect against dust etc in the business environment (they don't say that, just recall from before)

mbriody

Thanks both but she rejected the Vostro for being 'too ugly' :-)