Dell Studio 1558

[Powderhound]

I'm in the process of choosing a laptop for university, and am currently leaning towards a Dell Studio 1558 with a Core i5 450 CPU (the i7 versions have a reputation for doubling up as sandwich toasters...). First up, are there any reasons why I definitely shouldn't get one, bearing in mind that I really don't want a scrabble tile keyboard and battery life and portability are less important since I'm mainly getting a laptop for the convenience of getting to and from uni.

I've played around with the various specs, and have narrowed it down to three options (all other specs are equal):

• Buy from John Lewis for £699 with 500GB HDD and standard screen
• Buy from Dell with 640GB HDD and standard screen for ~£660
• Buy from Dell with 1920x1080 screen and 500GB HDD for £693

I'm quite keen on the higher resolution screen, whereas 140GB HDD space is unlikely to be an issue for me. The key difference between JL and Dell is that JL offers a 'free' two year warranty whereas Dell's is just one year, but obviously I'm paying a premium for this in real terms. Are Dells reliable enough that a two year warranty is superfluous? My understanding is that with laptops they either fail completely early on or otherwise manage to soldier on for a few years. Is this correct?

[jim]

I wouldn't bother with a 1920x1080 screen. I had a Studio 15 with 1440x900 screen resolution, and it was already a good bit smaller than I was used to (bear in mind that typical 1440x900 dimension is 19", so it was quite a big drop to 15.4"). 1920x1080 would be close to unusable, I suspect.

£39 for an extra year's warranty isn't awful, but I still wouldn't bother. Something going wrong between 12 and 24 months seems a bit unlikely.

[DDY]

Second on the screen resolution, 1920x1080 is excessive for a 15" panel.

I would personally go for the 2 years warranty option, not that I think Dell machines are prone to failure, but for any machine that's under daily use I wouldn't be surprised if a minor issue pops up within that time, for example stuck touch pad buttons, fan whine, optical drive failure etc.

[Powderhound]

I went for the 1080p screen in the end. I had actually tried out a 15" screen at that resolution in a shop and did in fact prefer it; I've got good eyesight and am comfortable with everything appearing smaller, especially as it gives me a bit more 'elbow room'. The only trouble is that delivery looks like it might take a while.

[mrt9888]

The higher resolution is better in Windows 7 as it scales the text size to medium so it is easier to read. I had a Alienware 15" laptop with 1920x1200 that came with Vista and the text and taskbar was small, I didn't use the Vista but when I upgraded to Windows 7 it set the text size to medium by itself and it was a lot easier to read.