8600 is an Awesome desktop replacement!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Ultra power and awesome screen for the lowest price I could find

Cons: A bit weighty, hard to fit in a backpack. It's a portable DESK-top.

The Bottom Line: 
A good laptop for those seeking power on a budget. The big, bright screen is awesome.

Author's Review
If you're looking for the ultra-portable, the 8600 is not for you. This laptop is on the large size. Measuring at 14" x 10" x 1.5", you'll need a special bag to carry it safely and comfortably. Mine weights somewhere just over 7 pounds, but that's pretty light for the amount of power included. Check it out:

[Specs]
Price: $1,750
CPU: 1.5GHz*
RAM: 512 MB*
Video: 32MB nVidia GeForce FX Go5200
Screen: WUXGA 15.4" widescreen (1900x1200 resolution!!)*
Hard disk: 40 GB
Media: DVD RW*
Built-in Net: modem, 10/100 Ethernet, Intel PRO 2100 Mini PCI WiFi (802.11b only)
* = Options above base model ($1,350)

[Screen]
I'm a computer science student and this laptop is just right for running Visual Studio .NET on top of WinXP Pro, IIS 5.1, SQL Server 2000 and 10-20 other applications at the same time, a must for web development. The hi-res wide screen is perfect for running apps like Dreamweaver of VS.NET that have a lot of panels. It's also nice for minimizing mouse movement since you can have so many windows visible at the same time. I personally almost always use a USB mouse with it since I don't like using the pointing stick or touch pad, but that's also exaggerated since the resolution is so high, it's hard to be accurate without a mouse.

[Video]
As for video games, the screen is very good. One thing to note is that if an app tries to use the screen as if it were a standard ratio (4:3) such as 800x600, the wide screen will display it flawlessley but it will stretch the pixels to fit the width of the screen. It's not too bad since the actual screen size is (4:3.75) and some games like Enemy Territory are actually supporting wide screen resolutions.

[WiFi]
Having built-in wireless is very nice. My university's campus has many hot spots and this laptop was online within minutes of turning it on for the first time. 802.11b is pleanty fast, giving speeds around 11Kb/s. Windows was easy, but I haven't installed Linux yet.

[Power Consumption]
This baby sucks down the juice, but I hear it's more efficient than the 8500 because of the Pentium M processor. I get about 2.5 hours of runtime on a full battery - that's for normal use. The DVD/CD-ROM uses it up more quickly and while I haven't watched a whole DVD on it I would guess that it would run for just about 2 hours before power ran out.

[Customer Support]
I've heard horror stories about Dell's customer service but I've had no troubles at all with my laptop so I can't speak to their quality. I did have to call while I was trying to purchase my laptop originally. I never specified a "max charge per day" amount when I placed the order and my bank blocked the charge. I called before their US offices opened and got routed to India. After a nice Indian lady spent 15 minutes taking down my information twice and putting me on hold she informed that I should call back to their main number in a few minutes when their US offices were open.

I would highly recommend this laptop model to anyone looking for the most power they can get in a laptop without paying too much for it.