Q: I am buying a laptop for college tomorrow and was wondering which one I should buy. Ok here are the two choices: Dell Studio (50$ More Expensive) 4Gb Ram 320Gb Hard drive 2.1ghz processor 6.1 pounds 15.4 inch screen or Sony Vaio VGN Nr 3Gb Ram 250Gb Hard drive 2.0ghz processor 6.3 Pounds 15.4 Inch Screen Which one is the better laptop, anything you know about them and just your opinions would be greatly appreciated
A: The Dell Studio line is a fairly new line of Laptops for Dell. So reliability data on them is scarce..however, Studio laptops are essentially made out of the same components as the other Dell laptops, so I can't see them being junky or unreliable. Sony Vaio line has been around for a long time, although they are constantly refreshed or updated to fit new technology. Both companies have good reputations. You'll find people on both sides of the fence, however, so keep that in mind. Any manufacturer who makes thousands or highly complicated products will have their fair share of duds or lemons. So someone is bound to get a hold of a lemon and complain that all Sony's or all Dell's are bad. Based ONLY on the information you listed here.. and nothing about the intended use or battery life.. I'd go with the Dell Studio laptop. The 4GBs of RAM, lighter package, and larger HD for an extra $50 seals the deal for me. RAM is going to become increasingly more important on everything from the next version of Windows (Windows 7) to Adobe Acrobat, to Office 2009, etc. -- so the extra Gigabyte of RAM will really help the laptop run future applications. As programs get more powerful, they also get BIGGER -- the the extra hard drive space will help. Digital pictures have gone from half to 1 MB each to 2 or 3MBs each and probably higher as the megapixels increase. HD movies also eat up a lot of storage Vista 64 with 32-bit versions of 3 or 4 apps, including Office 2003 can take up 8-14GBs of space on its own. So all these things mean you need as much HD space as you can get.