I have an Inspiron 1720 with very similar spec's to the laptop you are looking at, I have been using it for about a year now and have found it great.
Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo Processor T7500
2.2 GHz, 4MB Cache, 800MHz FSB
17" Ultrasharp(TM) Widescreen WUXGA (1920x1200) Display with Truelife(TM)
3GB RAM (1x2GB+1x1GB) 667MHz SDRAM
250GB SATA Hard Drive
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) 8600GT with 256MB GDDR2 Dedicated Graphic memory