Are these dell upgrades worth the cost?

[FishHooks]

First of all I will be purchasing a Dell Inspiration 6000 within the next month, but i'm trying to find out what upgrades are worth the price. Frist of all I dont do gaming but i do 6 table poker and use PT and all that good stuff. The comp will also be for college. I want to get a comp that will last a while but dont want to pay a ton (even though i'm not paying for it, its a graduation gift). I'm definatly upgrading the screen but other than that i'm not too sure. Which upgrades should I get? Also is it worth upgrading the ram on the dell site or just buying that seperate, it seems more expensive on their site.

Base model (what should I upgrade?)
Processor:
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB) [add $350 or $10/month1]
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 750 (1.86 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB) [add $250 or $7/month1]
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 730 (1.60 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB) [add $50 or $1/month1]
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 715 (1.50 GHz/2MB Cache/400MHz FSB)

RAM:
256MB DDR2 SDRAM 1 Dimm
512MB DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms [add $50 or $1/month1]
512MB DDR2 SDRAM 1 Dimm [add $100 or $3/month1]
1GB DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms [add $250 or $7/month1] Dell Recommended

Hard Drive
40GB Hard Drive
60GB Hard Drive [add $39 or $1/month1]
60GB 7200rpm Hard Drive [add $139 or $4/month1]
80GB Hard Drive [add $99 or $3/month1] Store more on your system

Battery (what is the batterly life on the standard battery?)
6-cell Lithium Ion Battery (53 WHr)
9-cell Lithium Ion Battery (80 WHr) [add $79 or $2/month1] Extended battery life

It comes with this Video Card 64MB DDR ATI's MOBILITY™ RADEON X300 PCI Express x16 Graphics, Would that been good enough to use to be able to hook up another monitor to my laptop for more tables?

What kind of wireless upgrades should I get? thanks for any comments or suggestions about anything to do with this stuff, not too computer smart. Thanks

[AncientPC]

CPU: Get at least the 1.6Ghz.

RAM: 512MB DDR2 2 Dimms, unless you plan on upgrading in the future.

HDD: I'd go with the 60GB 7.2k drive.

Battery: 6-cell is standard. I'd go with that anyway, as you can find cheaper 9-cells off eBay.

I would definately get a 9-cell replacement off eBay, the Dell 6000 has great battery usage. I actually get ~5 hours of battery time while watching movies!

Video card's good enough.

The Dell 6000 comes with wireless support for 802.11b/g and that's all you need. You don't need the 802.11a upgrade.

[FishHooks]

I've heard many people say 1BG of ram is what you need now days, but the $250 seems expensive when I could just buy more from somewhere like best buy or some online store?

[AncientPC]

If you don't know you probably don't need it.

Unless you multitask a lot and have 20+ programs running and / or lots of Photoshop or other program usage that takes up a lot of memory.

PT does not take a lot of memory to run fast, it is more dependent on drive speed and seek times.

[PITTM]

if you dont have at least 512 mb of ram in a new computer there is no point in buying it. i would strongly recommend getting 1 gig because ram is seriously where everyone makes their computer obselete early by buying too little ram. i would say go for the 1 dimm of 512 in case you want to expant, then maybe the 1.6 processor and the 60 gig hd. i dont know about the video card, many oem models only have one monitor connector instead of the standard 2. also, do you really need a laptop? you could probably get a desktop computer that works twice as well for the same price.

rj

[FishHooks]

Yes I do need a laptop, hinse why I said I need this for college, some majors require you to have a laptop and it would be very handy to bring to class, i hate handwriting notes, dont want to do that ever again.

[FishHooks]

[ QUOTE ]

Video card's good enough.


[/ QUOTE ]

It's good enough so that i could hook up another monitor to my comp?

Also whats the real difference between a 1.6 and 2.0 processor,

[AncientPC]

Yes. Hooking up a monitor to a laptop requires nothing more than a video out, which is standard on laptops nowadays.

The only reason for a better video card is for games. Integrated video cards may use up some CPU as well and produce laggy DVD playback for some people, but the x300 is a standalone card so you'll be fine.

I wanted you to get at least 1.6 for the 533Mhz bus, but otherwise the only difference between 2.0 and 1.6 is CPU speed. It's up to you whether or not you feel 400Mhz is worth $300.

[FishHooks]

Yea true, i'm just not exactly sure what the processor speed affect on the comp.

[AncientPC]

For web surfing / e-mail / poker it's marginal at best.

If you play games or run lots of heavy CPU usage programs then it'd make sense to get the 2.0ghz.

For what it's worth, I just got the Dell 6000 a month ago and got the exact same setup I recommended to you (except for the 60GB 7.2k hdd, they didn't offer it at the time).

[holeplug]

Poker takes up almost no resourses so if thats all your gonna do you don't need a great computer. What other people have said is good advice for you.

[FishHooks]

Thanks everyone who offered some advice, any more comments are gladely appreciated.

[Lost Wages]

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 730 (1.60 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB) [add $50 or $1/month1]
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 715 (1.50 GHz/2MB Cache/400MHz FSB)

This is a no brainer upgrade for $50 . You go from a 400MHz front side bus to a 533MHz.

Lost Wages