Inspiron 1300 wCeleron Suitable

I'm running Windows Media Center on a 600m with a Celeron 1.4GHz and 1 gig of ram. It plays media center files and DVD's fairly well with an occasional (once evry 10 minutes or so) stutter.

My one concern for you is if the tuner features a hardware encoder or not. If it doesn't, then encoding the TV shows (something done "on the fly" before your computer can display them) may be a heavy load on the Celeron. I only watch shows that I've recorded on my desktop and transferred to the laptop; I don't use it to record.

I suspect you'd be happy with the Celeron, esp. based on your current system, but Dell does give you 21 days to try it and return it if you're not happy.

When I bought my system, I had planned to upgrade to a Pentium M 1.8GHz almost immediately, but I have since found the Celeron handles everything I do (Movies, Visual Studio 2005, Office, etc.) fairly well, so I haven't gotten around to upgrading.

I had a 2.0GHz 533MHz FSB Pentium M Inspiron 9300 with a gig of dual channel 533MHz ram, 7200RPM hard drive, tru-life, GeForce 6800, etc., etc. last year and sold it because I found my use didn't warrant the cost or weight of that monster. It kind of sounds like you demand less out of a laptop then I do, and I'm happy with the Celeron. Also, the main diference between Celeron-PM is cache size (also PM has more sleep states to save battery life) a while back the cache size was doubled on both processors, so the celeron now has the same cache size (1MB) that the Pentium M had a year or so ago while the PM now has 2MB.

-Mike