XPS or Inspiron

I am going to get a new laptop and was wondering what the difference between the two is and advantages and disadvantages are of both.

Thanks in advance

Can you provide any links to the laptops in question? I think as a general regard most XPS laptops were designed for gaming, but we'll need to see the specs on which models you are speaking of.

XPS is the higher end line for Dell. They are geared towards extreme gaming (top of the line models) and multimedia/portability (the lower end XPS models).

Inspirion is geared towards multimedia (the higher end Inspirions) and everyday computing/basic tasks/value (the lower end Inspirions).


If your asking which models to buy to play GW from med-high settings, the lower end XPSs or Higher end Inspirions with a discrete video card (either Radeon or nVidia GeForce) should just do fine.

The aim of the laptop is for college next year but I also want juice to run for some games.

Since I will probably not be doing anything to big with multimedia an XPS would be fine for regular school stuff as well right?

If you've got enough juice (XPS) to run beefy games, you've got plenty enough juice to run Word, Excel, calculator, FF... the things you'll need most for school. However...

the tablet notebooks are real handy for taking notes in class

sounds odd but i prefer to hand write notes because it gets in my head better that way

^ smart man. Oh, and one more thing.....

<font color="darkblue" font size="5">XPS </font> > <font size="1"> Inspirion </font>

if you do go the Dell route that is....

Friend has an XPS, it's okay. But dude, don't get a Dell dude. Dude.

Thing to consider: the better a laptop is for gaming, the worse it is for portability and, more importantly, battery life. Unless they have individual power sockets in lecture halls these days...

My suggestion: use a desktop system in dorm room for games. use a laptop for school work.
This is why: If your laptop gets damaged or stolen and thats all you have you are SoL. With a desktop in dorm room/appartment you can back up your laptop, play games, ect. Not to mention the weight of a "gaming laptop" w/ books, lunch, ect. Also, a gaming laptop gets hot, very very hot.

My set-up: A super gaming desktop and a laptop. I use the laptop for doing office apps, web browsing, teamspeak/vent (when I game). It is so nice to not need to minimize guildwars to get to, or refference a map, on a wiki page or see who is in vent/ts.

Laptop specs: (yes its old but It is still the most solid laptop I have owned, a real workhorse)
IBM thinkpad t-23
512 ram
intel p3
30 gb hard drive
cd burner/dvd rom
A $12.00 laptop mouse
XP sp3
ENTIRE office 2003

I do have DoS box loaded onto the laptop to play some older games that do not require me to be online. Like Descent and Doom. I have found 90% of the time when I only have 20-30 min to game that is not enough time to do much in GW anyways. This set-up for a laptop like this can be gotten for $200-$300 used, if you are thinking about this route.

If you do not know already I am also going to suggest looking into openoffice.org = free M$ compatabile office suite.

The downside to the old t-23 is, it is not a pretty laptop but a few cool stickers dress it up nicely!

If you still want a gaming laptop go with the xps.

Same here... so I don't find it odd, but I have spent some time trying to figure out why when the hand writes, the brain stores better. That's why I personally prefer the tablet notebook for school. You can handwrite notes in class or while studying from a book on it.

if you're going to get a dell, don't go for xps or inspiron.

Inspirons aren't that great as anything more than a fancy type writer. XPS is overpriced and designed to rip off people who really don't know better. They look pretty and sound fancy and you pay through the nose for it. I've never heard good reviews for them.

Get a latitude.

and don't get vista.

So that's a skinny Lati with a triple shot of XP?

Hehe.

That.

Dell stuff is shoddy. They overcharge for replacement parts and form them in a way that prevents upgrading with standard parts.

I dont get peoples problems with Vista. Everyone I know loves it an it works fine for them. XP is flawless which brings me to wonder why they even bothered with Vista but still I have not heard problems from people I know that have it.

Vista just has a huge footprint Dome. SP1 fixed a lot of issues, but it is still a resource hog. With a really good PC, you won't have issues.

As with all microsoft OS' the thing was released with a ton of bugs that will take ta least 2 years of patches and service packs to clean up.

XP is not perfect itself, but with service pack 3 recently released it is the better option.

Lordshar has an XPS go with it..

Cousin runs a huge network at a school, the school decided to upgrade to Vista, and it ruined all the hardware compatibility. He had to downgrade everything to XP again because Vista had TERRIBLE driver compatibility. That and it uses a huge chunk of RAM that could be better used for games and music....

Be radical and get a Macbook Pro, then forget about the OS side for the time being and install Vista on it. This'll also give you +20 points toward your coolness and you'll need them while you're in college. Apple also do a student discount.

We really need to know what kind of games you plan to play and what your budget is??? With some more information on what you want to do and what you want to pay we can help you out with better advice and some links.

If you just play GW and aren't too concerned with multimedia manipulation etc... than you can get a more than adequate laptop for a cheap price. I highly suggest a Thinkpad for durability and reliability. They aren't really gaming laptops (for the most part) but they will handle GW with 0 trouble.

Well I ordered one (an XPS) and it has 4 gigs so that wont be much of a prob

Vista doesn't have terrible driver compatibility - manufacturers can't be bothered to get off their asses and write new device drivers for old products. They had plenty of time to sort their act out before Vista was released.