Dell 700m any good?

[zeturi]

I hate what I'm using right now. An Asus EEE 701 with:
800 x 480 7 inch screen,
512 MB of RAM,
4 GB SSD.
underclocked 900 mhz Pentium M.

I'm desperate for something with a bigger screen, so I bought a Dell 700m. The specs are:
Pentium M 1.6 ghz
1 GB RAM
60 GB HD
1280 x 800 resolution
crap battery, but I don't need much anyway.

If anyone has owned this, how's the speed? wI know the EEE isn't too slow, but I really want to see a performance boost with this computer. What about performance against an Atom netbook?

The screen is pretty nice from what I've read, but really all I want is something bigger than the eye-burning 7 inch I'm using right now. Also, though I know it's not built for it, could I do some light gaming with it? Nothing newer than around 2004 or so, with an exception for PW.

 

[XCVG]

What does it have for a GPU? If it's GMA, don't buy it.

 

[zeturi]

My seller didn't specify, but quick googling looks like all of the 700m laptops come with an Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Mobile, gives only 64 MB of shared video memory. Guess that kind of screws any plans of gaming, then.

Oh well, guess I'll play some more Slime Volleyball.

 

[XCVG]

Yeah, extreme graphics is about as extreme as putting your hand on a frying pan... extreme in a bad way, extremely bad. Look how I don't even capitalize extreme. It's that bad.

 

[zeturi]

Yeah, extreme graphics is about as extreme as putting your hand on a frying pan... extreme in a bad way, extremely bad. Look how I don't even capitalize extreme. It's that bad.

Well that sucks. But hey, at least tomorrow will be the last day I use this evil cursed underperforming monstrosity POS of a netbook.

 

[zeturi]

Got it today, great laptop. Managed to play PW on 1280x800, medium-low settings. Should be able to handle psone emulation just fine, so I'm happy.

 

[Bibin]

My IBM X40 has the same Extreme 2 graphics - it's nothing made for gaming, but it's not awful or anything.

The Pentium M does have some serious balls, though. With a good amount of RAM a Pentium-M based laptop is very usable for day to day tasks and even a bit more.

 

[ericdesouza]

Dell's new policy of not using d-bay devices on the 700m and 9200 is piss poor. i realize that the neutral gray of the other notebooks doesn't work with the black from the new ones, but they could at least have made the form factor the same for those of us who don't care about the looks and already have a substantial investment in d-bay devices.