Is $399 a good price for a dell laptop. here are the specs:?

$399 isn't bad but you can probably get a faster machine from best buy for that price. Most people use dell b/c they want to build a custom machine, yours is pretty much standard parts. There are four parts that really run the show in a computer. The RAM is fine... I don't know what you plan on doing with it, but the computer just has a media accelerator for a graphics card which will make it impossible for you to play any modern games. As for the processor it is satisfactory for normal use (internet, word processing). The hard drive is often over looked but windows uses it for virtual memory. 5400RPM is the slowest dell offers, 7200RPM was the highest at one point but I think they have 10000something RPMs now. Your hard drive will be relatively quit compared to the faster models.