Last night after much deliberation Lauren and I finally decided on a laptop for her future endeavours as a writer and student at the university. As many of you know I have primarily subsisted on second hand, or ebay bought, used and repaired laptops. And in many ways I plan on continuing to do so (if I could only fix Liz’s and Barney’s old ones anyway)
Well, after a few years of the P2 400 Mhz that the braincell knows and loves, followed by a year of the P3 800 Mhz that was bought for my sister-in-law to take to school back in 2001, we are actually buying our first new laptop EVER!
I’m a little excited. The original plan was to wait until Apple’s WWDC and see if they released the thin ‘n’ light that has been rumoured for about a year now. But with recent news that it will be delayed until at least October a new plan was hatched in order to avoid the multiple-year cell phone ordeal that Lauren sometimes refers to as “the Great Wait”. And we are purchasing the fairly thin ‘n’ light model that dell just released, the XPS m1330
The thing is about 0.7 inches at one end and about 1.3 at the other, and weighs in around 4.4lbs as we configured it w/ the mid-sized battery (the smallest puts it in at 3.9).
XPS M1330, Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 (1.8GHz/800Mhz FSB, 2M L2 Cache)
Soft Touch Red Casing XPS M1330
1GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm, for XPS M1330
13.3 Inch Wide Screen WXGA TL WLED Backlit LCD with Camera, XPS M1330
128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS, for XPS M1330
120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive for XPS M1330
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, English
Vista, PC-Restore, Dim/Insp
Dell Owners Manual installed on your system,click on icon after system set-up to access
DELL RESOURCE DVD,BACK-UP XPS-M1330
Dell Travel ExpressCard Remote Control, IR
Creative Earbud EP630
Integrated 10/100 Network Cardand Modem, for Inspiron
8X DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive for XPSM1330
Integrated High Definition Audio 2.0
Intel 4965AGN Wireless-N Mini Card
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, for XPS M1330
Dell Wirless 355 Bluetooth Module (2.0+EDR)
Slim and Light LCD with Crimson Red Casing with Microsatin Finish and Camera XPS M1330
Intel Centrino Core Duo Processor
Sub-Total : $1674
Shipping :
Tax : $119.76 <-- This sux...since when did Dell have a plant in MN....damn mall kiosks must be driving this
Order Total :
$1793.76
Only bummer is that the current ship date is 8/22/07...must be backloged for this since it is the first thing that isn't ugly as sin that has come out of dell in a long time. Also, I'm going to call and tell them I just want the OS install CD and not the restore CD... I hate restore CD's. They always have all this crap I don't want on it, and it just wastes my time reformatting and cleaning it all off so the system doesn't suck. Everything I want to put on a PC can be re-downloaded later.
The future plan is that if she actually gets a decent book deal and the Apple thin-n-light is out by then (let's hope it gets released with OSX leopard) and it is a good bit smaller and lighter than this, then she can get it for herself as a present, and I get this laptop, which will have Windows Vista promptly removed from it. (notice the intel wireless card....that was in every way worth the extra money for the hassle it saves when installing Linux)
Anyway, we are both excited, and hoping that the ship date will move up as Dell ramps up production on these bad boys. Rumor is that it will start moving the large scale production facility in Malaysia to build these en mass this week.