This is a great deal for a notebook. I just told a friend whose in the market for one to order it. The Celeron 380 is based on the P-M, just a slower FSB and smaller cache.
For 99% of most people, this cpu has more than enough processing power. It'll encode video (divx/xvid/mpeg2,etc) on par with a desktop P4 running at ~2.8-3GHz.
I've got two notebooks - a compaq nx7010 (P-M 1.7GHz) and just picked up it's replacement - an HP nx7400 (Core2Duo 1.83GHz). 95% of the time I use the notebooks, I have the speedstep software (which allows you to control the cpu frequency) running at the slowest it'll drop to.
For the "M" that's 600MHz and the Core2Duo it's ~900MHz. I run in this mode for just about everything I do (email, web browsing, mp3 playback, dvd playback, office, etc) and you'd not know it wasn't running at full speed. The advantage is two fold - one the notebook stays cooler, so you can actually use it on your "lap" and two -- when not plugged into an AC power source, the battery life is a heck of a lot longer.
The only time I set the frequency to full speed is if I'm doing video encoding or compressing files, etc.
If you need a notebook -- don't bother waiting in some line for 15 hours to save $100 or $150 bucks vs this deal. At $499, I don't know how dell is making any money on it haha. Especially since it comes with a dvd burner, 1GB memory and a printer.
-frak
