SYSTEM COLOR Jet Black
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition
DISPLAY Glossy, high contrast, widescreen 17.0 inch display (1440 x 900)
VIDEO CARD 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS
MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
HARD DRIVE Size: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
OPTICAL DRIVE CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card
BLUETOOTH AND WIRELESS USB Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)
INTEGRATED WEBCAM Integrated 2.0 Megapixel Webcam
BATTERY OPTIONS 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0
This wouldn’t be a half bad Inspiron. You can also upgrade the graphics card to 256MB and a slightly faster GPU for $140 more. I wouldn’t worry about upgrading Vista, eventually you can get a Vista Enterprise key from campus and there’s really nothing wrong with Home Premium anyways. I also selected the Dell Plus warranty package which adds accidental damage protection. Just ask Nickname how nice that can be. As configured, this laptop would game pretty decent and only costs about $1,500. If this is supposed to last a while, the graphics upgrade might not be a bad idea. If you just have some extra money to throw into it, a hard drive upgrade to 7200 RPM ($90 something) would be a good investment as well.