May 22 2008
∞
A Laptop Limerick
My laptop is not acting well
So I decided to purchase a Dell
I know that I’ve said
I’d never get in that bed
Must be having a blizzard in hell
Alright, so a lot of you know that in the past I’ve sworn that I would never buy a Dell, believing them to be overpriced, poorly-engineered hunks of junk. Well, I’m reversing course on that opinion.
I believe that Dell has turned a corner and is on the road to being a respectable and maybe even well-liked technology company. The first evidence I saw of that was the launch of IdeaStorm, a site at which users submit ideas to Dell and vote on ideas they like the best. A site like this is only as successful as the ideas the company decides to implement, and Dell has done an outstanding hop of this. Some ideas that Dell has accepted and implemented include environmental initiatives (carbon offsets), allowing users to opt out of almost all preinstalled software, offering more systems with Linux installed as the primary operating system, producing a Tablet PC, and improving the aesthetics of their products, just to name a few. This really impressed upon me the value of listening to your customers and taking care of their needs and desires.
Aside from mere good intentions—and we know the place to which those pave the road—I began to see Dell products gain more and more traction in the tech community. The XPS M1330 laptop, first released in mid-2007, has been extremely well-received, and it’s probably not a stretch to call it the most popular laptop Dell has ever released among the tech community.
I previously believed that any laptop screen under 15” was not worth my time. After schlepping my current laptop around for 3 years and 9 months, I decided that I would like something a bit more agile, and I began considering exactly why I was so insistent on having a screen that size. I realized that a lot of it came from wanting to have enough resolution to have an adequate work area for my design work. This is still a concern, but not nearly as much as it was when I was still in school and carting my laptop to class, or when I was using my laptop for work last year. So I came to the decision that a 13.3” screen would serve me adequately, while allowing for the overall size and weight of the laptop to be dramatically reduced.
The M1330 is just 1.33” at its thickest point (no comments from the Airhead gallery, please; there is pleasantly thin and then there is obsession) and weighs in right at 4 lbs. This will make it much more pleasant to carry around the house and yard and to take with me on the road. Dell also does not make some of the major feature sacrifices that some other subnotebook (ultramobile? thin-and-light? I can’t remember the preferred nomenclature) manufacturers must make. The M1330 includes a slot-loading optical drive, 2 USB ports, 1 firewire port, ethernet, VGA and HDMI outputs, an ExpressCard slot, and an 8-in-1 card reader.
I also configured my M1330 with an LED-backlit screen, the Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 processor (2.4GHz, 800MHz FSB, 3MB L2 cache), 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Getting the LED-backlit screen was very important for me, as its increased brightness will reproduce colors more faithfully, and its energy efficiency will increase battery life.
Additionally, I went with the (PRODUCT) RED model of this laptop. Fifty dollars of my purchase will go directly to the global fund to fight AIDS in Africa, and no, the $50 was not added to the price of the laptop. Beside the fact that it’s just a good thing to do, the special model features a stunning red lid.
The last, very important reason for choosing Dell was that all of this was available at a very attractive price point. Dell has come a long way from their past egregious pricing models.
So there you have it. I never thought the day would come, but now I anxiously await the arrival of a shiny new Dell!
I anticipate a lot of people wanting to comment on this post. Regrettably, Tumblr doesn’t allow comments. Feel free to get in contact with me any way you know how. I might post a follow-up with some of the feedback I receive.
