Does anyone know what the build quality of Dell Studio laptops are? Got a budget of about £800 - £900 to spend on a decent laptop and managed to spec a quite frankly amazing laptop for £859 with Dell in their Studio range. Just wondering if they're better quality than the Inspirons and how the plastics feel? Cheap? Or are they ok?

My netbook is built well

For those that may be interested...

Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Mobile Processor (1.6GHz, turbo up to 2.8GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)

4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]

512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HP 4570

15.6in Widescreen Full High Definition (1920 x 1080) WLED with TrueLife

Primary 9-cell 85 WHr Lithium Ion battery

320GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive

Genuine Windows® 7 Professional, 64bit, English

£859.00 inc VAT and Delivery

My studio is about 10 months old now, the only issues is the fan is quite noisy (compared to my old Sony Vaio which was almost silent) this is a Dell problem from what i have read as the only fan outlet is on the bottom of the laptop so is just a couple of mm off the desk, hopefully this will be cured with a notebook cooler

No experience of the Studio model, but have a Inspiron from 2003 that was in daily use for five years and never let me down (still works, but hopelessly underspec'd today). My present office pc is a Latitude, also trouble-free. For the last 10 years my uni has used Dells as office computers (desktop mainly) and AFAIK the IT dept. are content.

Thanks guys. I know that dells on the whole are great. I've never had another manufacturer's computer since my first Dell in 2005. Call me a brand loyalist .

I had an Inspiron 6400 that I bought in 2006, has served me well (and is still going great today) but just fancy something a bit flashier and faster that will hopefully last me 4-5 years .

I have had a couple of dell laptops at work in the past and they have been pretty good build wise (apart from the exploding batteries).

The only real problem I came across is that the older machines used to have a raised metal dell logo on the lid and if you put anything heavy on the laptop when closed the logo was pushed into the screen and knackered it - the school my mum used to work at had at least a dozen damaged this way, the teachers used to carry paperwork on top of the laptop between classrooms. Mind you I don't think many dell laptops have that sort of logo anymore so it probably isn't a problem now.

Thanks to all for your help.

Bit the bullet and bought it last night.. still waiting for my order confirmation email though, I guess my credit card company is fraud checking the transaction or something, haha.

Uuuhhh... Mr Edward. Can I please have your account number and sooooooooort code please?

Bit the bullet and bought it last night.. still waiting for my order confirmation email though, I guess my credit card company is fraud checking the transaction or something, haha.

IIRC it took Dell a couple of days to confirm mine as well, but once it was confirmed it was actually delivered quicker than their estimate.

Never had any problem with Dells, so I'm sure you'll be fine

And as for the issue with screens from heavy object damage; well, no manufacturer I know of is immune from this! You just shouldn't but anything on top of a closed laptop, end of...

Steve

Dell's automated robot thing called today.. delivery scheduled for tomorrow between 8am and 1pm Woo!