HP Pavilion vs. Dell Inspiron

[woosmaster]

I am buying a laptop for the first time (going away to college next year) and I am trying to decide between a Dell Inpiron (e1705 or e1505) or an HP Pavilion, wiht similar specs. THey are the exact same computer basically, but I heard Dells are more difficult to upgrade than HP's...is this true? If I wanted to upgrade an Inspiron like 5 years from now, would it be difficult? How much more difficult than a Pavilion? This is the last factor I am weighing in deciding on which notebook to purchase. Thanks for your help.

[azzey]

Upgrade what?

Laptops usually aren't upgradable with the exceptoin of memory (sometimes) and hard drive. Other than that, no upgrades.

Keep in mind that Dell does not have very good technical support in case anything ever goes wrong. As far as manufacturers go, I would recommend Toshiba, Acer, or Gateway.

[woosmaster]

what if i started off with a cheap video card and wanted to get a better one later?

[Erik]

Pretty much the only things that will be upgradable on ANY laptop are RAM and hard drive. Top end laptops might offer a very limited number of video card options.

For school I would be looking for a laptop that is light and easy to carry around, with good battery life. I myself am partial to IBM (Lenovo), I have seen some of them go through some rough handeling and still come out working fine.

If you are not really strong with PC work then consider the tech support, as mentioned Dell support is rather lacking lately.

[TopChip7]

DELL shudder - eek!