Rate This Laptop 2+2

[GoldenIP]

I have just played around with customising a laptop on DELL. These are the main components:

<font color="red"> Intel Core™ Dual Core Processor T2080 (1.73 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium - English
Collect &amp; Return, 1 Year Service only
15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display
1024MB 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x512)
80GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
Intel® Media Accelerator 950 Graphics Up to 256MB shared graphics memory
Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software
9 cell Lithium-Ion Battery (85 Whr) </font>

It came to ~£525 (~$1,000)

All I'm going to be using it for is the following:
Microsoft Office
Multi-tabling (4-6 tables)
PT &amp; PAHUD (obviously running in conjunction with poker tables
MSN Messenger
Web Browsing (Firefox)

Basically, nothing out of the ordinary or anything such as hardware draining games like Oblivion and FEAR.

Is this laptop suffice?

Do you recommend any worthwhile upgrades i.e. CPU power, graphics cards etc? Basically, if I upgrade, I want it to be money well spent.

Thanks!

[kazana]

It looks alright to me. Just keep in mind that you won't be able to play any 3D games on it. The integrated graphics card is comletely weak sauce.

[GoldenIP]

Yeah, the two upgrades I was going to make were the graphics card and the memory. However, the price they were charging to turn the 1Gb RAM into a 2Gb RAM is quite a lot.

[MrBlueNose]

Wouldnt it be worth upgrading the LCD Display(dependent on the laptop it should only be about $100 more) to get close to 1600x1200?

[MURK]

yeah, I think I'd want a bigger screen and higher resolution if it was my poker workhorse. Depends on what you're comfortable with I guess.

If you want/need extra RAM then Kingston should be a lot cheaper and I've had nothing but good experiences with them.

[phu_dawg]

I give it an F, as in fail. Any laptop without 1200 vertical pixels just won't work for a 2+2 member. Also, if you are going to play video games, you should upgrade from the IGP unit.