Dude, just enjoy your new computer. You're going to drive yourself crazy with this buyer's remorse. As long as you could afford the price tag, you did fine.
My 2 cents but everyone looks for different things. It adds 3lbs which is a huge amount of weight for a laptop. I would never care about 140 GB of HDD space, storage is cheap. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136751 Here's a 500 GB of easily portable space from one of the best HDD makers for 80 bucks. And unless you're trying to run games that your laptop can't run anyways off of it, playing music/movies off of it will not have noticeable performance degradation relative to your internal hard drive. If you're going to lug around something that's 8lbs, you might as well do it in a laptop bag, which means you can spend $80 and get another battery, which gives you 6 extra hours instead of 3. Once again, just my 2 cents, if you're happy with your purchase then just enjoy it.
Why would I get an external drive if i already have a big drive in it? And if a laptop has a blu ray player in it, isnt the bigger screen the best? Oh, and i bet that with a 8 hour battery, i wont need an additional one.
Different strokes for different folks. That I3 has a slightly higher benchmark score than the new one, but here's a dirty little secret: 90% of laptop users out there won't notice. I have a 3 yr old C2D T7400 laptop that runs fine on Win7 while playing left 4 dead. This was supposed to be my programming laptop but it became a glorified gaming/surfing/video player. Some people like a bigger screen. Others who travel often know that bigger isn't better. They'd rather get a light weight 14' or less screen, which is ironically more expensive than a 15". Others like a better resolution, which your new lappy has. I personally think the 720p standard laptop screen res is abominable considering the power inside each laptop. Battery life is also crucial, but if you want discrete graphics then it's a trade off. And of course, after 2 years, battery life won't matter as much as how well a charge that battery pack has left. So if you think all of this is too much info, then quit worrying about the "better deal" and enjoy the fact that you got a new frickin laptop at a decent price and watch some blu ray or hi def goodness on it.
That's why I say everyone looks for different things. For me, the first two things I look for are processor speed and weight, since unlike desktops, it's harder to fix those two issues, thus I want to make sure I get the best I can in those areas. When it comes to battery and storage, I feel that those needs can addressed later on if needed (i.e. external drive if I feel up 500GB of my laptop, or extra battery if I find myself in situations where I would need the extra 3 hours). But once again, if you likely what you bought, don't worry if you got the best deal. I bought the Gateway NV59C at Costco a year ago because it fit what I wanted in the following order of priority. Ask you can see, it's actually not very tech heavy in terms what I looked for. 1. It's within my budget of <$700 2. It's from Costco, which has great return policy 3. It's an I3 when a lot of laptops in its price range are still sporting pentium dual core and stuff, I thought it would help future proof it better (not even sure if that's a good assumptions) 4. Has a webcam 5. Has a Blu-Ray 6. Not overly heavy My old laptop broke the week before and I needed something quick. It fitted what I need for it when I bought and it's still running fine for what I need today. I knew I got a reasonable deal, and even if it's not the best laptop in the world, it fits what I need and I'm happy with it.
