The Dell Inspiron 1505 Verus the Dell Inspiron 1705:

I have the Dell Inspiron E1505. My son-in-law has the Dell Inspiron E1705. What are the differences?

I wasn't the target audience for the larger 1705. You will buy this one if you are a gamer, load a lot of photos, graphics and DVDs. This Next Generation of computers allows four poker games at a time for about $700 (on sale). At about $600 (on sale) the 1505 gives me lots of power, lots of storage and lots of speed.

Memory and hard drive:

The 1505's hard drive is a 40GB Serial ATA, 5400 RPM. The 1705's is 80 GB 5400 RPM SATA. These numbers not only affect the storage capacity but the rotational speed of the drive. These are both fast machines.

Both computers wake up immediately after hibernating. That was my pet peeve with my old computer. The options are to hibernate, standby, turn off and restart. Compare 40B to my previous 2GB hard drive. I now don't have to wait for anything to load nor do I have to deal with a crashing computer.

What they look like:

They are beautiful machines. Other than the size they are identical. The lids and bottoms of the notebooks are silver, which is the magnesium alloy construction which is supposed to add protection.

The lids provide good protection for the screen. I read that I could push in on the back of the screen and not get ripples. I tried this with both machines and didn't get any ripples. I experimented previously with my old computer and pushing on the lid I saw ripples on the screen. I can describe it as almost being able to see my fingerprints through the screen.

The 1505 is about 14 inches wide by 10 ½ inches deep by 1 ½ inches high. The screen display is 15.4 inches. This is measured diagonally. It weighs a little more than 6 pounds. The 1705 is a bit more than 15 inches wide by a little more than 11 inches deep and 1 and one half inches high. It comes in at close to 8 pounds. The weight will vary depending on how you build it.

One of the benefits of the 17-inch dual screen powerhouse is that you don't have to minimize screens when using Instant Messenger and to check e-mail. More screen real estate means that the primary activity (Poker, Word, etc.) can share the screen.

Visual and Audio: