Dell M1730 is a formidable powerhouse
I bought one of these used and owned it for about a year primarily as a gaming computer. During my experience with this laptop I was very impressed. Though it only sported a dual core processor, and maxed out at only 4GB of RAM (even though it was a 64-bit processor running Windows 7 64-bit) it was surprisingly fast - especially for gaming. With the dual-SLI video cards (512MB dedicated video RAM) I was able to run most games at rather high settings without any trouble at all. When not playing games, I typically had a virtual running on half of the screen and a movie playing on the other half and the laptop never broke a sweat. The large 17" display is absolutely beautiful and the FULL backlit keyboard (with numberpad included) provided a nice sense of completeness. There were two major downsides to this laptop. #1 The excessive weight. Now... I understand that this is a desktop replacement computer and they are not designed to be light... but this thing was HEAVY - including the gigantic AC power adapter. #2 The AC power adapter is EXTREMELY delicate. The power adapter has a tiny microcontroller inside it that sends a signal via an extra wire to the laptop's motherboard. If that wire breaks, or if the microcontroller loses its programming (which reading about this you will find happens OFTEN - and it also happened to me) then the laptop will either not charge, or will slow down to 800MHz because it "thinks" that a genuine Dell power adapter is not plugged in. This can be overridden by programs like Throttlestop but it is a pain nevertheless and sometimes requires replacing the AC adapter or the whole motherboard... OUCH.
franzcatch
Saint Louis, MO