Go with a desktop.

Dell Inspiron:
i7-4500U, 1.8GHz
8 GB RAM
1 TB HDD
Intel 4400 Graphics

vs

Asus VivoBook
i7-3517U, 1.9GHz
6 GB RAM
500GB HDD, 25GB SSD
Intel 4000 graphcis

Both roughly the same price. I'm trying my best to understand the specs but they seem close enough that I'm not sure which one should have better performance.

flip a coin, by far the best and easiest way to choose

The second one is obviously better...

first one

@Tru, the moment I stop living the life of a transient, I'll get a desktop. I hope it's soon.

Dang it, didn't see the posts before mine and now my comment just looks dumb... -.-

yes it does rather doesn't it

Whichever you choose, never try out the other option. If you don't understand the alternative, you won't regret your decision.

Yonni, it really depends on what you're going to use them for.

(and, by the way, Thinkpads currently tend to be the best in price)

The first is better. If the only thing the second has on the first is a graphics card, you can probably buy a better one and swap it out.

Build quality and support is going to be far better with Asus than Dell. For that reason alone, I'd go with the 2nd one.

What do you opan on using it for? That's what really matters.

The 1st one has the better graphics card. The 2nd one just has the SSD

I don't game that heavily - although I'd like to play a bit of civ5 or the new XCOMM.
I'll use it for a bit of work and maybe some really light coding.

A Honda is better than a Ford, even if the engine is slightly less powerful.

I don't think either of those laptops will handle XCOMM well.

Here, slightly more, but if you buy through Amazon or Costco you get a 2 year extended warranty, with US 24/7 help desk support.
http://www.costco.com/.product.880842.html

Meh, so no xcomm. I have a ps3 that I can use for gaming. Thanks for the advice guys.

It depends on your need. The 8 Gig versus the 6 Gig is nice for memory intensive apps. The 4400 video is the nicer video card, the 1 TB drive gives more storage, but the add-on small SSD gives faster boot times. The processors are both dual-core with hyper threading and just fine (I run an i7U in my Sony Vaio touch, great processor).

And you *can't* swap out the video cards in a laptop as those Intel video cards are integrated in the processors and laptops don't usually have AGP or PCIe slots in them.

Boot time doesn't seem all that important, what's an extra little bit of time whenever I then the thing on - or am I misinterpreting it?

An SSD will also load large files, like video game levels, much quicker.

Well, you can also have the SSD be your paging file drive and there it is *very* important. But remember that SSDs still have some questionable reliability. They either fail very early or they live forever. I've replaced the one in my Sony that died within two months but the new one is now almost a year and a half old and running great.

As small as that SSD is, I doubt he'd be loading applications onto it. It will probably strictly be a system drive.

Don't most SSD/HDD combos come with software to prefetch data from the HDD to the SSD now?

@abge, that transfer isn't going to be smooth enough to play any type of intensive game.

I don't know about the prefetch software as my system is pure SSD:

This is my system:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AJ13U7840

Mine is a little older (18 months old) and has the older brushed aluminum outside, but the specs are the same.

I'm sorry, Draugnar, but that's a terrible price. You could buy a (significantly better) MacBook Pro for less. And MacBooks are commonly thought of as overpriced...

Depends what he ended up paying.