Screens

14″
15.1″
17″
12.1″

I am already fairly certain that a 17″ screen requires a laptop that is too big. The Inspiron I borrow from work sometimes is a 17″ screen. I am looking for something more portable.

I am also fairly certain that a 12.1″ screen would be too small and/or too expensive.

But I would suggest STARTING by settling on what dimensions you think would be reasonable and going from there. Much of what makes a laptop useable is form. Figure on form first then worry about the guts and price.

At Dell, it seems that Inspiron is the lower-rail laptop and XPS is higher rail, with XPS for gaming as top-rail. If you did get the Inspiron, I’d upgrade the processor to a Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo T7500 or another T7###. I am looking at the Inspiron, but only because I’ve used it and don’t mind it. I want to see what the 15.1″ screen looks like. I like the screen on the Inspiron and have seen favorable reviews of the screen.

Mom mentioned Toshiba and mentioned her bad hardware experiences with Dell. I will look at the Toshiba.