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General discussion

Dell 700M VS. 6000

Jan 18, 2005 3:27AM PST

I am trying to decide which would be the best choice. They are about the same price. I need something portable for class notes and digital photography. What have you heard about the 6000? Good? Bad? Thanks for any info.

Discussion is locked

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What model?
Jan 18, 2005 6:50AM PST

Which model are you referring to? The Dell 600M? The Compaq X6000?

The Dell 600M is an older laptop that was designed for Pentium 4 but then switched to Pentium M. It's under 6 lbs so that makes it quite portable. It has a square 14.1" screen so you have to decide what you like better. The tiny 12.1" widescreen or a larger 14" square. I believe it has as-good or better battery performance than the 700M, which is interesting. of course the 700M is sub-5-lbs and is tiny and sexy.

In either event I would wait 1-2 months for Dell to include the new Sonoma Centrino technology in both the 600 and 700m.

If you were referring to the Compaq X6000, forget it. You said the word "portable". The X6000 is NINE POUNDS. 9.3 to be precise. It's a BEAST. It has Pentium 4HT which means bad battery life, but it does have a 17" widescreen, which is delicious. However, being an outgoing college student m'self, I find you can't lug one of those huge things around in a normal bag, even if you could stand the weight.

Me, I went with the Dell 8600. It's just a hair over 7 lbs, and it has the 15.4" widescreen, which is the maximum to be portable, in my opinion. I needed the widescreen, though. Had I not, I would have gone with the 600m or possibly a Toshiba Satellite. I do Digital photography and graphic design so I couldn't use the small 12.1" screen . . . for class notes it would be GREAT, but for anything graphical its just a tad small.

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Foot in my mouth.
Jan 18, 2005 7:00AM PST

There is a 6000, look at that.

And boy, is it ever nice. The 6000 makes use of the new Sonoma platform, using the faster RAM, has a faster Front-Side bus, and on and on.

Basically this could be a replacement for the 8600. You can see the thinner case, and it weighs less (6.65 lbs).

Now, here is what you have to watch for. Notice the graphics. As of now, they only offer Intel Media Accelerator 900 Graphics, which interestingly does not use a GPU but rather the CPU to create graphics and shares the system memory. It is well documented that Shared memory for grpahics is bad, especially for games or digital image processing.

But then again, look at the 700m. It has integrated graphics, but as of yet, they haven't put Sonoma in there. So the integrated graphics aren't as good as the ones on the 6000.

Anyway, if I were you, I would consider something with dedicated graphics like the Dell 8600 (if they put Sonoma in it) or the Dell 6000 (only if they put dedicated graphics in it).

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Official Intel Sonoma release Wednesday 1/19/05
Jan 18, 2005 7:29AM PST

It will be interesting to see tests on the video improvement of Sonoma integrated graphics and Intel claims better audio performance also.

They admit, in fact, that the Centrino standard was originally for business users only but it has been so successful overall now they are adding Sonoma improvements to benefit the consumer side.

The official release of Sonoma is tomorrow 1/19/05 (Wednesday) according to the newspaper so Dell has jumped the gun a bit with its new model with Sonoma included already............

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"Business Only"
Jan 18, 2005 7:38AM PST

That kinda irritates me . . . my business involves me using Photoshop.

Besides which fact, business machines are supposed to be more robust.

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Business means more solid and better support but less specs
Jan 18, 2005 7:42AM PST

Actually business means stronger cases and more robust keyboards, etc for heavy use but they lack some of the consumer specifications.

For example the HPnc6000 is a highly rated HP business notebook (see Cnet rating yourself) but it lacks a firewire port which nearly all mid-range mainstream consumer models have.