I was searching for a good lap top for last two months. As I do not have technical knowledge about systems I took help of my cousin who is a hardware and networking engineer. We ignored Sony & Toshiba as they were out of my budget. We set our focus on either dell or HP or Compaq and finally decided to go with dell. The only problem with dell is that you have to order online and you can not have the look before it arrived at your place. But as I used a dell latitude D620 earlier given by my company, I was ok with this system.
Dell also offers great deal of customization. Inspiron 1525 costs around 36, 000 including Vista Home Basic. I was not comfortable with the word vista as some of my collegues - all finance people told that performance is not good with vista. I also didn’t want the carry case as I have so many bags got from company as new year gift, christmas gift, etc. So I thought I will use of of them. I got the laptop for 33000. I got the delivery in just 3 working days from dell after making the payment. The configuration is given below.
Core2Duo - T5800 2Ghz Processor
2 GB RAM -
160 GB SATA Harddisk.
Intigrated web cam
15.4" TFT display with truelife (I don;t know the meaning true life, but its good while working).
Free Dos
Intigrated bluetooth
The audio also very good. I play music on it in home and the sound clarity is quite good and I don’t think I need a speaker as the volume is very good.
I loaded XP in it. Initally it was bit difficult to get the drivers for XP but now every thing is fine and I am enjoying working on this laptop. The screen is also quite big, 15.4". The size of the keys on the keypad are also very good. I am very comfortable with the size of the keys and can type at the same speed with which I work on a desktop keyboard.
My over all feeling about this is very good and would suggest people to go for it if they are looking for a good configuration at a reasonable price. I checked with some dealers in bangalore for the same configuration in HP and it works out close to 40K.
One more thing, the support of the Dell is also good. Although you have to spend 10-15 minutes before getting connected to a technical support person, the solution they provide are very good and it works. I think they have very good knowledge of the product.