Originally Posted by
LAXlocal
How old of the Dell laptops take the cheaper 8GB DDR3L 1600 (PC3L 12800) 1.35v Laptop Memory that is $30-$40 a stick ?
Any of the i5-2xxxM and i5-3xxxM generation machines from Dell will take that memory (e.g. E6x20 and E6x30), and will go to 16GB memory. The older of the two generations (E6x20/i5-2xxxM) will not get the power savings advantage of the DDR3L/1.35V memory as they are too old but DD3RL will work just fine at 1.5V.
Machines older than that (e.g. anything Core 2, or the first generation i5 machines -- E6x10 /i5-520M) is going to be limited to 4GB DIMMs and 8GB memory total.
and do any of the lower priced Dell laptops have Nvideo card ?
A program I would like to use checks for a Nvideo card
I think you mean "Nvidia"
None of the 13.3" or smaller business machines of those generations (from any manufacturer I'm aware of, not just Dell) have a discrete GPU, whether AMD or Nvidia.
There are some smaller 11"-13"
consumer ones that do like the 1st-generation Sony Vaio Z or the Alienware m11x or Alienware 13
looking for a $200-$300 used Dell laptop and then add 8gbx2 memory and SSD
Look at the E6420 or E6430 (14") although I don't know if you'll find one with the Nvidia GPU in that price range.