New Laptop in the making?

Will be looking for you input on new laptop purchase from Staples which has sale starting this week-end.
1. Acer Aspire Intel Core i3-330M Processor 17.3" screen,4GB DDR3 Ram, 320GB HD,and Win7Home Premium @$499.00
2 Dell Inspiron, Intel Core i5-430.17.3"screen,4GB DDR3 Ram, 320GBHD, Win7HomePremium @$650.00

This is my 1st laptop and looking for your input and suggestions on this purchase.
Leaning towards #1 because of $ but for $150 more am I going to get more bang for my buck? TIA

go with 1

Acer is kind of the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reliability. I would lean towards the Dell especially since it has the better processor. What I did not see was the graphics card. If you could provide the links, we could compare. That could be a determining factor. But in any case, Dell is the better box - in general.
If they have Toshibas, I would look at those too. Toshiba is rated #1 in quality/reliability together with Apple.
Also: Have a look whether those 17" have 2 bays for the disks. Some of the 17" HPs have that. That would be a real advantage because you could use the second bay for an SSD to install the OS (SSDs cost less than $100 these days). On the HP, the second bay is empty, but at least it is there.

born2golf said:

Will be looking for you input on new laptop purchase from Staples which has sale starting this week-end.
1. Acer Aspire Intel Core i3-330M Processor 17.3" screen,4GB DDR3 Ram, 320GB HD,and Win7Home Premium @$499.00
2 Dell Inspiron, Intel Core i5-430.17.3"screen,4GB DDR3 Ram, 320GBHD, Win7HomePremium @$650.00

This is my 1st laptop and looking for your input and suggestions on this purchase.
Leaning towards #1 because of $ but for $150 more am I going to get more bang for my buck? TIA

Having had very souring experiences with both Acer and Dell laptops... and seeing your price range... I'd suggest you have a peek at the entry level Toshibas... I find them to be of far better quality.

I just found this - for whatever it is worth: Laptop reliability survey: ASUS and Toshiba win, HP fails -- Engadget

whs said:

I just found this - for whatever it is worth: Laptop reliability survey: ASUS and Toshiba win, HP fails -- Engadget

Nice... printed and pinned on the board. Thank you.

Someone mentioned video, and that's gonna be the deal breaker (if you're like me).

There are 2 flavors of laptop video; onboard and card-based. Onboard means that video is handled by the motherboard, card-based means that it goes through the PCI bus (always preferable, but more expensive.)

Card-based video is going have much better performance and offers a chance (albeit a slim one) for upgrading later on. Onboard video has the advantage of being cheaper, but what you get is what you're stuck with (forever, no chance of upgrade.)