OT: My dell came in today

[misfortune]

Well i've been using my beloved and loaded Dell E1505 for a couple days and I absolutely love everything about it.

The x1400 is ok for gaming, I've yet to load up HL2 or anything more than just Warcraft III but so far, so good. I'm sure it'd be alright with WoW

The Screen is glossy and all that, I thought I'd be annoyed but its fine. Its widescreen 1680x1050. Even in my office, the screen is so bright the reflectiveness isn't a huge issue. Its a user by user thing. If you use it solely in an office environment, I'd probably recommend against it, but as long as you can control the lighting, you should be fine. They totally should have a matte sxga+ screen.

It has a very solid feel and it looks sharp. If you have laptop/lcd you know how easy it is to distort the screen from the back. Not possible on this machine. Also the keyboard is setup perfectly. The keys don't have that springy feel that I love, but its definitely a good keyboard.

Gone is the ugly grey and blue scheme. Now its a sharp silver/white combo. I'm no longer ashamed to bring it out in class.

In the weight department, its just fine. I can pick it up with one hand and move around. Its just at the right weight to be portable without being too heavy. I'd let my mom carry it around.....well maybe not. But for a 15" machine its just fine.

Oh MCE is pretty slick, a nice interface for videos or pictures shows. Or music. One of those things you have to see to fully grasp. Word of caution, it has remote desktop, but it can't join a domain, so if you need domain functionality, buy professional.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. When time and money affords, I'll probably try to put a 7800 go + more ram into it for maximum performance. For reference its a fully loaded e1505 with 1gb ram, bluetooth, 1.83 core duo processory and 256mb (128?) x1400 processor.

[bbig119]

MCE is definitely a cool OS, but before anyone runs out to buy it be aware that it is restrictive in customizability and flexibility as a HTPC. For pictures and videos it'll do just fine though, its the TV/DVD/music playback that I have the most issue with.