Wootalyzer's Pricing Post! - The price of today's woot item is saved here for future reference
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Dell Dual-Core i5 Notebook
$779.99 + $5 Shipping
Condition: New

*DISCLAIMER* Wootalyzer! is in no way affiliated with Woot!, and this post may not always be here!

Inconceivable!

My office uses these as our standard-issue work computers and it's a great system. Highly recommend.

fyredriftwood wrote:My office uses these as our standard-issue work computers and it's a great system. Highly recommend.

With an i5 and SSD, this thing will be stupid fast for anything but gaming. (Gaming depends at least as much on the GPU, which I can't vouch for.) It will boot in well under a minute, probably as fast as un-hibernating.

Oooh, not bad. Dell's business laptops are generally pretty well-built from my experience. This is a pretty good price for this hardware. Not geared toward gaming though.

So, is it Windows 7 x64 or x32? Makes a big difference - x32 is obsolete and won't access beyond 4GB.

Oh, x64. Found the specs. Cool.

I guess SSD model is OK too - the early ones had error issues but some remapping technology mitigates that.

Tempting ...

Passmark Benchmarks

Im done with dell, my last for computers ive bought from them and the quality of their laptops and customer service have both decreased... im looking into getting a new laptop right now, im thinking toshiba i guess...

What??? No USB 3.0? It should have at least one for that price.

fyredriftwood wrote:My office uses these as our standard-issue work computers and it's a great system. Highly recommend.

X2.

bradleylarsen wrote:So, is it Windows 7 x64 or x32? Makes a big difference - x32 is obsolete and won't access beyond 4GB.

This would be a pertinent question if this were 2006.

bradleylarsen wrote:So, is it Windows 7 x64 or x32? Makes a big difference - x32 is obsolete and won't access beyond 4GB.

edited: specs say 64 bit

bradleylarsen wrote:So, is it Windows 7 x64 or x32? Makes a big difference - x32 is obsolete and won't access beyond 4GB.

Operating System:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Copied from the details on the front page.

I'm impressed with Dell's recent products; my partner got a new Dell similar to this with a 15-16" screen and a regular HD, and the thing is very fast, both the boot and in general; I can only imagine what this would do with a SSD. I both a Toshiba Satellite just before her and the screen is definitely inferior, as was my HD (I had to replace the Toshiba HD 12.5 months after my purchase; this Dell has a three year warranty). BTW if it works for you, SSD is the way to go.

Dude, I should have got a Dell!

ive been researching laptops a lot in the last few days this is only worth it for the ssd hard drive, otherwise you could prob find something better, i dont like dell for their fertilizer customer service and the last laptop i bought from them falling apart on me when all i did was treat it well and what was more disappointing was i bought an upgraded model...

How fast would something like this ship?

anybody know if this thing is loud? Every dell laptop I"ve owned has had a loud fan and got hot. I need a virtually silent, cold running laptop with SSD and about this size. could be a match if it runs silent and cold.

Dell's Customer Support is second to none! I love those guys

Shinespark wrote:This would be a pertinent question if this were 2006.

There's plenty of x32 systems being sold out there. Woot tends to get the models on their way out so it's very pertinent.

Last month I got slammed with buying a Windows 7 x32 system (brand new from Zones.com) ... didn't even think to ask. I've noticed since how many are still "out there".

I see lots of positive vibes for Dells in this thread.

My experience with Dell has been:
1990s: Well-built, solid and durable computers
2000s: Cheap crap prone to numerous problems

Has Dell turned a new leaf in the 2010s? Started using high-quality components and offering good support again? They kind of lost my goodwill after a pair of bad experiences.

Anyone know what SSD this is? Can make a huge performance difference. Sandy Bridge CPU is a sign that it might be a recent one.

jseureau wrote:Dell's Customer Support is second to none! I love those guys

haha very funny.. i hope you are joking, thats why they outsource it to other countries and will bounce you back and fourth from rep to rep.. also unless you insist, if you buy something new from them and it breaks they will want to replace it with something used which matters to me, i buy things new and not used or refurbished for a reason when i do... i used to like dell...

I like almost everything about this laptop with a couple exceptions:

Size (I'd rather have a 15.6" with a number pad, or a 13" for portability)

No USB 3.0. This is actually a deal breaker for me. I just bought a new laptop a couple weeks ago, and that was a requirement. I haven't had any luck with touchy eSATA ports and drives, but my USB 3.0 drive kicks butt!

If neither of those things bother you, go for it. It's a sweet deal for some great hardware.

I've never been a fan of Dell support, but this has amazing specs. I would probably get it if I didn't recently get my ASUS i7 from here. Dell finally got smart and started booting with SSD. Pro.

This looks to be about half the price that Dell Business is quoting for the exact same computer with the same hardware on their own website. The SSD drive makes this a smokin' deal.

Steep price for an i5 (and only dual core???), max on 8GB RAM, and no dedicated graphics card. Clearly the SSD is pushing this price through the roof and at that you don't even know what kind of an SSD... Likely a standard SSD instead of an OCZ, Intel or Mushkin.

Better off finding a lappy with a mechanical drive and an Nvidia graphics card and potentially an i7 (or at least a quad core i5!) for less $$ and then buy a performance SSD down the road for cheaper.

This deal is not worth it IMO.

Low hear due to lack of heard drive and super quiet

novastarj wrote:I see lots of positive vibes for Dells in this thread.

My experience with Dell has been:
1990s: Well-built, solid and durable computers
2000s: Cheap crap prone to numerous problems

Has Dell turned a new leaf in the 2010s? Started using high-quality components and offering good support again? They kind of lost my goodwill after a pair of bad experiences.

I've had the same opinion. The new ones seem to look nice but the last decade of crap makes me wary...

I stare at an E6420 for 8 hours a day for work. The led-backlit screen is crap. Very poor colors and very bad shift in color/brightness with viewing angle. I got out of bed just to tell you this. Good night.

P.S. To the one wondering about fan noise. It's fairly quiet, but when taxed and placed on an inappropriate surface (ie. mattress), the fans are audible. They are not completely silent, but fairly quiet, especially compared to some earlier Dell models.

Just came back from visiting their site in Austin, TX. Nice campus. Command Center was most impressive.... Good quality machine right here. This is a great deal. Just wish for business it had Win7 Pro.

Anyone know if this supports the Dell e-dock? I already have one with an aging Core 2 Duo system so this is a tempting upgrade if it does.

Thanks in advance!

RE: SSDs...

Wow, $779 is pretty expensive for an i5-based laptop with only a 14" screen. It doesn't even have USB 3.0, although it does include eSATA and HDMI ports. Nor does the optical drive play Blu-Rays. And it doesn't have a hard drive. About the only thing it has going for it is a 256gb Solid State Drive (SSD).

Advantages of the SSD include durability, size and energy use. Since there are no moving parts, it is not susceptible to mechanical failure. Banging the laptop in transit, i.e. in a car, will not affect it. I'm not positive about this, but I believe that it is also unaffected by external magnets, which can erase a normal magnetic platter. Its size and weight are usually less than that of a standard 2.5" drive. And because there is no motor, it uses less energy and generates less heat while also often being faster.

You can find a low end 256gb SSD for about $250 on sale, although better models cost more. Is this under-featured laptop worth the advantages of an SSD? Much of that depends on whether you move the laptop around a lot, or whether it mostly stays on the desk plugged in.

PS - while SSDs are now the latest must-haves for higher end laptops, it's interesting to note that the first netbooks also used an SSDs. For example, the Asus Eee PC 900 sold by Woot has a 4gb SSD and no hard drive. Needless to say, that wasn't large enough to run Windows and enough space for software/data, so it used Linux.

For about $80 you can upgrade to 8 gigabytes of RAM. It's easy to install (takes about 4 minutes including watching the instructions on Youtube). Then, you'll be unstoppable!

eatheror wrote:Anyone know if this supports the Dell e-dock? I already have one with an aging Core 2 Duo system so this is a tempting upgrade if it does.

Thanks in advance!

Yes, this system will work with the e-series docks. It won't work with the older d-series dock. With the ssd and higher than standard res screen, this seems like a pretty good deal. In for one.

This thing will run faster than a scalded dog with SSD.

Here's the issue:

You need to have a second hard drive to move the page file and any other swap drive that your software needs in order to keep too many writes to an SSD drive as they have an infinite number of writes.

That infinite number is arbitrary. So your best bet with this system is to ALWAYS keep a current backup. And I mean to do this DAILY.

SSD will always be faster, just never as reliable as a standard SATA drive. While SATA drives do fail, they don't have an infinite number of times that they can be written to.l

In my opinion, the EXX20s are a step up from the EXX00s and EXX10s. I had a 6500 for three years, just got a 6520. The 6500 was generally sub par, aside from the 1920×1200 screen. The plastic was cheap, the screen bezel cracked quickly, it often ran super hot. It's annoying that the 6520 maxes out at 1080p (so-so screen), but the build quality seems better, and it runs a lot cooler. Fans rarely kick in, if they do the virus scan or backup is most likely running. The chassis seems quite a bit sturdier. I had a D610 before the E6500, and it was tank-like. I purchased used D620 and D630's through work for friends and family, would definitely not get the E6X00 or E6x10 models.