Inexpensive Laptop for my son

[SetBuilder]

Clearly you do work for Dell, and clearly you missed my point.  I bought the computer 2 and a half years ago, at that price.  Meaning that it would be cheaper now.  I never claimed that I bought it new.  My point was that today, Alram could get a much nicer computer for 750 bucks. 

Alram asked for inexpensive.  You told him that his son 'needed' a 1000-plus dollar computer to cope in college.  I told you otherwise. 

BTW, where did Alram ask about gaming?  I could have sworn that he said it would be used for 'minimal to no gaming'.  I guess you were too busy upselling him to actually read his post.
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If you are buying it new, you aren't getting much of anything for that price. If you are buying it used, you aren't calling Dell. So there you go!

As far as gaming, I used Diablo as an example, because it's a game you could run very comfortable in 95, and XP Pro (which is much more efficient than home) requires FAR MORE graphical power than win95 AND Diablo, put together. Have you ever actually looked at requirements for any of even the more basic MS Office programs, graphical editing programs, or much of anything along those lines? Are you aware of exactly how the entire GUI of an operating system effects your system memory and processor?

Essentially, if you want to ask questions, then follow them with empty insults (as I hate selling computers, I'd much rather build them, use them, and say "#$%& off" to people who want to assume they know everything about them when it's obvious they don't), then you are now at the level of a stupid and ignorant customer, so you can have the same kind of example. Your proc is a UPS truck. The average command, such as to run a spreadsheet, is like a small package. The average command (or extremely long chain of commands) associated with sound is like a large size Uhaul box. The average command from a video card now... That's a package the size of a buick. If you want the system (especially lower-end) to perform at a decent level with "basic" stuffs like spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, and basic graphical editing (all of which are taught in BOTH high school and college courses, even the entry basic courses, and many of which are needed in business, art, and other classes as well at this point), wouldn't it seem like a good idea to put the buicks on the car-hauling semi, and leave the ups truck to it's packages?

A dedicated video card has a dedicated, specialized processor specifically meant for video processing. A 300MHz graphical processor is faster at processing all video (including even the basic windows startup screen) than even a XEON 64 bit proc. Now a Mobil P4 2.8GHz proc performs at roughly about 1.2GHz unplugged. A Pentium M 1.5GHz performs at what it says, plugged in or not. When you are talking about low speeds like that, why take up three quarters of the power just to be able to process video commands?

Also, same deal with RAM. Why would you want to fill up your RAM with video crap when you don't need to.

Also, there is an issue of bus lines. Most notebooks at this point are still running AGP archtecture, which has one system bus. With only one system bus, only one piece of hardware can talk, only one can listen. When the average video command requires transferring huge amounts of info from RAM to proc to be processed, then from RAM to the video display chip on the vid card AND RAM AND HDD cache, it can take a long time. Ideally, the video card can do ALL of that, and it never caches anything on the HDD, so the system bus stays free, again for functions like loading the system extensions necessary to load up an internet browser, or opening the several dozen programs that make up a word processing application.

BTW, I've been working with computers since LONG before windows came out. As soon as windows came out, that's when video cards really started to boom. Whether you were a gamer or not, it was good to have one. Did you not ever wonder why?

I'm not sure why he would need a dedicated video card for word processing and surfing the web. Am i wrong?
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See above, but basically, it's a good idea. Performance will be MUCH MUCH smoother, will work faster, and will run newer programs necessary for school much much longer.

Your choice though. If you do call Dell, again, I'd recommend calling the education line. If you are not planning to get an extended warentee, but use the school name, you'll probably get roughly an extra 4% discount. If you do get a 3-4 year warentee, you'll get a 12% discount.

Best of luck to you, and I hope your son enjoys his new (or used :P) notebook.