My Laptop Search: From Lenovo to DELL

My laptop search started 2 weeks ago. I had some very simple requirements; however I found it incredibly tough to meet my simple requirements. I am specifically talking about buying a laptop in India, specifically in Pune.

My simple requirements were – laptop should:

• Have an Intel Core 2 Duo based mother-board
• Should have at least a 667MHz FSB
• Should have at least 2MB L2 cache
• Should have a 14” screen
• Should be light weight
• I assumed that all laptops would have at least 80GB HDD and 1GB RAM
  

So, my search began with Lenovo, I looked at the X and Y series. Surprisingly, Lenovo, uses some really old CPU, most of their mother-boards were based on 533MHz FSB, the Intel Core 2 Duo mother-boards with 667MHz FSB cost more than Rs. 45K, which is a lot. I looked around at all available models (in India), couldn’t find a model that would cost me less than Rs. 50K (Lenovo 3000 Y300/Y410/Y500).

Then I looked at Toshiba. They had some really good mother-boards, for example the Satellite M200-A411D. However the look and feel of the laptop looked more like my 5 year old son’s laptop. There was a lack of ruggedness, lack of proper ergonomic thinking for the keyboard and port design. Specifically the keyboard is white in color, which means that it will get dirty in a week, and I won’t be able to fix that.

I looked at Sony Vaio VGN-CR23G series. Really cool models. Nice colors, nice mother-board, nice keyboard, almost everything was nice. Except for the weight – it weighs 2.5 kilos, which is more than I thought it should be. The cost was also higher, at Rs. 54,990 .

Then I saw DELL VOSTRO 1400 Notebook. I got an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (T7250), 2.0GHz, 2MB Cache, 800 MHz FSB, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD, 9 cell battery, and Vista home. That was the end of my search. I found my laptop. I bought it locally instead of ordering it online or on phone. Turns out to be a pretty good laptop, I happy with it. DELL has got much better since I started using DELLs back when I was at VERITAS in 1999-2002 timeframe. Good job DELL.



Looking back, Lenovo is way behind in its CPUs, I think. I love the rugged design of Lenovo, but they should get newer CPUs faster FSB and more L2 cache.