Pfft, like I’m going to buy into your Mac crap.
I’ve had my laptop since Christmas a good while back. Three, four years perhaps. That’s a long time for technology. I mean, back then, HD wasn’t even heard of. Solid State Drives were like “What. Why would you want one of those?” and 1GB of RAM was just unheard of.
Well, I’m about to join the ranks of the cool kids (Hmm… maybe not that far) and get a Dell laptop. Specifically a Dell Studio 15.
While it sounds like one of those laptops professional photographers use to look keen, it’s really just a tarted up average Joe one. So it’s just my opportunity to gloat about it. 
To start off with, the Studio line of laptops is a mid-point between the “Trust your child with it” Inspiron laptops and the “Dnt trust teh dark lord lvl 50 Azeroth n00b, plz” hardcore XPS laptops. They come default with a lot of cool things, such as:
- Slot-load DVD RW drive. None of your silly little drawer business.
- Bright LED display.
- Better than average… everything inside…
- Built-in Webcam and Mic. To make those Oovoo chats a hell of a lot more practical.
- HDMI output, baby.
- Biometric fingerprint reader. Screw you, passwords.
- Touch-sensitive media controls (like my phone)
But I got a couple of other things which make it a little bit more sexual.
Because I’m a bit of an in-closet gadget nerd, I was reading this website when Mike Ming released his new Dell cover patterns. I expressed an interest, so I managed to get a coupon for a free colour upgrade. Result. The one I got is to the right – called Bunch O Surfers. They all looked quite cool, but I went for this one mainly because it wasn’t too… over the top, like the rest of them.
Secondly, and perhaps less interestingly, I got £40 off for ordering today. Awesome.
So it arrives on (or before) the 19th November (There’s a delay thanks to everyone taking advantage of money off. Damn you.). It’s currently in production, if the Dell website is anything to go by. So that’s cool. Only problem is that I want it now!
Congrats on getting a new computer, very exciting – stinks with the wait though, it’s gotta be killing you.
HOWEVER! You really should have went with a mac dude, you are going to kick yourself in the rear once you experience Vista and have to deal with going from XP to Vista – it’s the worst move you will ever make. Period.
I checked the specs on that link you posted and it doesn’t give anything specific, just up to 4 gigs of memory or 320 gig of hard drive…etc. What did you end up ordering? POST THE COMPLETE SPECS for your machine.
Let’s see, what else is there. Dells are great machines, it should last you a while, very high quality. Like I’ve mentioned, I do believe it is Vista that will cause you troubles, so don’t be afraid to downgrade. *snickers* Anyway, great choice with the Dell, horrible choice with the operating system.
So, have a good one!
@TJ: I love your consistent Mac-loving ability. Really. It’s cute.
Anyway, because I’m too lazy to type it all out, I just took a screenshot of the order form for you. Enjoy, I guess…
Well, considering that Mac OS X Leopard is the notorious superior operating system, I agree with TJ.
Now, Matt, I don’t know if you’ve ever used Leopard or a Mac, but I can surely say that they’re amazing (or they wouldn’t be so expensive, non?). You pay for premium quality, whatever any anti-Apple/Mac fanboy says to you.
I’m no fanboy, but I know the difference when I’m using Vista and Leopard and it’s not all that much, in fact. However, there is one key element that separates them both and what makes Leopard just oh-so much better. You wanna know what it is? Sure, I’ll tell you.
Well, when I’m on Vista, everything just works normally like it should (but sometimes it’s just stupid, you know…), but it’s not a user-friendly OS. On Leopard, everything just works out of the box, I don’t have bloatware on my machine that comes pre-installed and I’ll probably never use, which consequently its only purpose is to occupy HDD space. All applications (or nearly all of them, have yet to find one that isn’t) are just beautiful and follow the standards that Apple define to programmers. On Windows, an average Joe can create a program that’s as ugly as an old bat, has nearly no functionality whatsoever and is riddled with bugs (example: WINDOWS INTERNET EXPLORER [yes, in caps]). I just don’t know who developed that application inside Microsoft, but whoever it is made a fortune out of a browser that is slow as a tortoise, works half the time, and isn’t safe at all.
Eh, enough rambling. Enjoy your new laptop.
Dells are awesome, the OS isn’t. If you want to install OS X Leopard on it, just give me a holler and I’ll help you with it.