Need advice on Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P9600 (2.66GHz, 6M L2 Cache, 1066MHz

Hi,

I dont know much about computers and I am going to purchase a dell E6400. Can some tell me which hard drive and memory would work best with an Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P9600 (2.66GHz, 6M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB or will a 2.53GHZ work just as good for what I need it for
? I am using the laptop for emailing , surfing the net, using the microsoft office programs, pictures and storing documents. I would like the fastest option and I am open to suggestions. can someone please help me. below are my options.

160GB Hard Drive, 5400RPM

80GB Hard Drive, 7200RPM with Free Fall Sensor

160GB Hard Drive, 7200RPM with Free Fall Sensor

250GB Hard Drive, 7200RPM with Free Fall Sensor

64GB Dell Mobility Solid State Drive

64GB Ultra Performance Solid State Drive

128GB Dell Mobility Solid State Drive

160GB Encrypted Hard Drive, 7200RPM


2.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 1 DIMM

3.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS

4.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS

4.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 1 DIMMS

8.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS

Thank you in advance for your time. I greatly appreciate it.

the 250GB 7200rpm HDD and 8GB of ram.

and the 2.53 ghz would be slightly slower but not by a lot.

also after those changes what does it come to because one of the Quad core ASUS 89xx series laptop's might be in your price range.

is an 18.4" screen ok?

the name of it's the 8930-7665.

it comes with a 2ghz quad core and 4GB of 1066mhz ddr3 ram and a 500GB 7200rpm HDD so it will be faster for what you're doing.

edit: it's $1700

I have an E6500 with P9500 processor and 4GB of ram. I picked it to run a couple of different CAD packages. For your stated use you do not need nearly that much power. It doesn't really hurt anything but it will cost you more, it will use the battery faster, and it will give off more heat when you are using it. I notice my machine gives off a lot more heat than my older Inspiron.

I dare say you would do fine with any laptop of 2GHz or faster, 3gb or 4gb of ram, and the standard 250 or so gb of hard drive. You can probably get a machine with this power for less than half of the price you quoted.

You might think about other features- type of screen backlight, do you want a bluray drive or hdmi out, fingerprint reader?, webcam?, bluetooth?

Also you didn't say what OS you want. The E6400 probably comes with vista business, or Winxp. If you are interested in multimedia you might prefer vista home.

There is a lot of information on notebookreview.com, including even a forum specific to the Dell Latitude/Vostro/Precision machines.