700m Questions

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I ordered the 700m on 7/28 online with no indication that delivery may be delayed. I only found out that it was projected to be the first week of September when I checked the email confirmation.

I have taked to everyone at order support (most couldn't speak english) sale (the most helpful) online chat etc.

Basically the story as sales put it is that Dell's marketing/management directed them to start accepting orders knowing that they did not have it ready to produce and would not be shipping until September. They offer no option either you wait and hope it is produced and shipped before the projected date or you cancel the order. I believe they did it to book sales and revenue in the 3rd quarter of 04.

I would have opted for the Sony however the cost is out of our corperate budget range. Our tech department also hates Sony because of quality and service issues.

I am waiting until next week to see if the order deliver date is moved up.(Fat chance) otherwise I will opt for a Fujitsu S6000 or Gateway 200X same configration and cost.

Frankly I think is is deceptive sales on Dell's part.

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@rhporter wrote:

Join the club.

I ordered the 700m on 7/28 online with no indication that delivery may be delayed. I only found out that it was projected to be the first week of September when I checked the email confirmation.

I have taked to everyone at order support (most couldn't speak english) sale (the most helpful) online chat etc.

Basically the story as sales put it is that Dell's marketing/management directed them to start accepting orders knowing that they did not have it ready to produce and would not be shipping until September. They offer no option either you wait and hope it is produced and shipped before the projected date or you cancel the order. I believe they did it to book sales and revenue in the 3rd quarter of 04.

I would have opted for the Sony however the cost is out of our corperate budget range. Our tech department also hates Sony because of quality and service issues.

I am waiting until next week to see if the order deliver date is moved up.(Fat chance) otherwise I will opt for a Fujitsu S6000 or Gateway 200X same configration and cost.

Frankly I think is is deceptive sales on Dell's part.

Dell does this on EVERY new model, do a search for posts on the Dimension 8400 that just came out.   Currently the ship date when you begin your configuration is 9/7.

They did not do this to boost sales in the quarter, the third quarter runs from August - October. 

Oh, one more thing. This whole shared memory deal with the RAM, exactly how 'bad' is it? Everywhere I look people say it's not good. I understand that the Intel Extreme Graphics card in the 700m is shared memory. I currently have a dedicated graphic card, 64MBs, installed in my PC and only 256MBs of RAM. I do digital imaging work with my PC, as I am a graphic design major, and wanted the laptop to do work at school. But despite my PC lacking in RAM, I get along just fine using photoshop and illustrator, usually running together, on just 256MBs of RAM. My question is how can I expect my 700m to preform since I have 512MBs of RAM and the shared graphics card? Even with the graphics card draining my RAM down to 448MBs, that's still a leap above what I have in my PC. Can I expect the graphics card to run like a dedicated 64MB graphic card since it can take 64MBs away?

I'm only slightly annoyed with the ship date, and I'll get over it. College begins on the 30th of this month for me, and I won't have the laptop until the 7th of next month it seems. Lucky for me, I'm a commuter so it isn't like I'll be 250 miles away or something when the computer arrives. It just would have been nice to get everything on it set up before the semester starts.

At any rate, what about the crystal clear display on the 700m? Is it comparable to the Sony XBrite technology? I haven't had the pleasure of actually seeing a 700m in person, but I have seen the Sony TR and other Sony systems with the XBrite technology and I have to say, they're the best screens I've ever seen, reminding me of $5000 HD flat panel TVs.

Note to rickmktg:

kind of off-topic, but why does the posters message appear in your reply? not even sure where you configure that, but makes it hard to read your reply.

not a flame at all, your postings are excellent, but just to let you know even though it's in bold, it kinda makes it hard to scan for your actual reply. or am i missing something. or maybe i'm just getting old and pedantic... :)

 

oooooh interesting

Message Edited by Xarthan on 09-03-2004 03:22 PM

i had a feeling that was going to get up someones backside...

 

I am not an expert but here is a comparison between xbrite and 700m.

xbrite - It seems this technology lets users to change setting easily. It also has either 450:1 or 500:1 contrast ratio with under 12 milliseconds of reponse time.

In contrast, 700m comes with 185 cd/m2 (nits) luminance with 250:1 contrast ratio. Dell tries to brighten the screen by using highly reflective monitor screen which bounces off lights and images like a mirror. Surprisingly, this monitor is almost the same compared to 8600's luminance and worse in contrast ratio (8600 at either 300:1 or 400:1)

On paper, Sony's xbrite is much superior and better than 700m.

Regarding the shared graphic memory... I've used 8600 with ATI 9000 and 700m with Intel. Let me tell you... Intel is labeled as Extreme 3D but it's not really a 3D card when it comes to gaming. Forget about using it for games. Most of them won't run. (those using Direct Draw???) If you are getting one to replace your desktop, consider bigger and faster ones.

What this notebook is good at is portability. It's small. More than adequate for word processing, internet surfing and etc. If you are using those functions, those 64 mb of memory you lose is not much. But defitely get one with at least 512 mb of memory.

Sony's good but for twice the price of Dell, I will choose Dell everytime.

Can anyone recomend me a good backpack for 700m? I'm a student so I need room for books as well

Ogio backpacks are great for laptops. eBags sells them amongst other online places.