I finally got my new laptop, hooray. First impressions are good so far, the screen is awesome, 1920×1200 pixels in 15.4 inches. Very clear and crisp. The ATI radeo 9600 pro turbo is also quite nice, I can play BF1942 in 1600×1200 mode at 32 bit no problem. I thought the 5400 rpm drive was going to be a bit of a speed problem but so far it hasn’t made a noticable difference.
While this notebook dawarfs my averatec 3150 in size it’s still quite managable, not much larger than my old toshiba tecra 8100 that I lugged around for 3 years. The best part about the Inspiron 8600 is the new dothon core pentium M chip, it’s faster than my P4 2.8Ghz and it lets my laptop have 4.5 hours of battery life. More than enough to watch a couple dvd’s while on the plane.
I will post a proper review when I’ve lugged it around for a week or two.