First of all what I wanted was a desktop replacement machine, one on which I could do all my spreadsheet and word stuff as well as play games. I am an engineer so I need good connectivity options as well.
The choice was:- Dell Inspiron 3800, 5000, 7500 Toshiba Tecra 8100 HP Omnibook 6000
The Dells are very good machines, I used to old an old 7000 series. The 3800 is light and quite quick, the 5000 has all the multimedia features you need, the 7500 has even more. But... The 3800 is not meant to be used as a desktop replacement, it doesn't have the oomph for that. The 5000 and 7000 are great machines but heavy.
The HP Omnibook is the machine I would probably buy by choice except that it is very expensive and uses the ATI graphics card
The Tecra is not as expensive as the Omnibook and uses the S3 Savage MX graphics chip which is by far the best notebook graphics chip out there! This means that this machine can truely claim to be a desktop replacement as I can also play my favourite games. But note even with this chip, some games dont work, bottom line is if your main reason for a PC is to play games, then buy a standalone and not a laptop.
The Tecra series is designed as a high spec (and therefore high cost) business machine which has all the features of a desktop with the portability (only 2.6kg) of a laptop.
All in all a very good machine which probably costs a bit too much and can be a little sensitive to registry changes i.e. loading and removing lots of software.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) cool and quite robust trackpad, good display,64-bit windows 7 (-) few connectors,dell drivers only, not realy for gameing (most models), finger print prone!
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