E1505 first impressions 17

My Inspiron 6400 was ordered on the 30th, so I should have it in my hands by mid to late next week, and I am looking forward to it. I'm also planning on wiping it clean and reinstalling 40gb-40gb, one for XP Pro and the other for Gentoo as I spend my time fairly evenly split between the two environments. I've been running on a Toshiba Tecra 9000 of the last couple years but unfortunately it died a few months post warranty and I decided it would be smarter to buy a new system then service that old one. That and the fact I get student discount through Dell thanks to my university.

Specs on my system are:

CoreTM Duo processor T2400 (2MB Cache-1.83GHz-667MHz FSB) 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife 1GB DDR2 SDRAM 128MB ATI MOBILITYTM RADEON(r) X1300 80GB Hard Drive 8X CD-DVD Burner Intel PRO-Wireless 3945 802.11a-g Mini Card 80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

I'd considered going with the second battery as a large amount of my usage is in lectures and labs where I'm not always guaranteed access to power (and with a few lectures this spring-summer that are 165 or 180 minutes, it may pull it close on battery life) but for now I decided to try it out first. I did however opt for the 3 year warranty, although I'm hoping my past experience with Dells keeps up, as I so far haven't had to replace or even service a single one that I've personally owned.

For that matter, since my Tecra died im back to using my old Dell CPi (P2 300mhz, 64mb SDRAM and 4gb HDD) which still runs pretty nice considering its been ran over by a truck, until this one arrives. Once I get it I will be sure to post my take on it, especially the Gentoo install as I've read a few people on other sites that had major issues especially with the Radeon x1300 in it.