I’ve noticed a yearly activity that’s now becoming a bit of a ritual. When year end approaches, my mind starts wandering towards new notebooks! Almost exactly three years ago I picked up the NEC Versa (it still boots up though the screen’s degraded in brightness to almost half of what it used to be). Nearly two years ago it was the MSI Wind which I picked up specifically for Hannah’s birth and now thinking of donating it away. Last year at this time, the toy was the MacBook Pro which still today is going on strong if a little limiting in hard drive space.
Just recently, the VGA port of my work horse notebook – a superb IBM Thinkpad T60 – died. It’s a four year old notebook that was increasingly demonstrating old age symptoms, what with the clutter that Windows XP was piling up in the registry and that there was no easy way on my own to refresh the OS installation. While that notebook still functions fine otherwise, it’s basically unusable for teaching since I can’t project output displays now. I’m supposed to get a replacement at work, but uncertain how long that’s gonna take.
So, over the last several days I went about looking for a desktop replacement notebook that I’ll use exclusively at work and to replace the NEC Versa. Just a couple of requirements: it had to feature a 1920×1080 full HD screen, a full-sized keyboard, an i5 or i7 processor, gobs of RAM, a blu-ray drive and finally if possible under $2.3K, about the original price I paid for the Versa 3 years ago.
The usage? Besides teaching material development, I am also going to use it for some 3D game development and photographic-editing work. I’ve bought Adobe CS5 that’s still sitting on my desk.
Over the weekend, Ling was again looking at me with bemusement as I poured over user reviews, Youtube videos and brochure specifications.
I don’t think I’ve ever looked so hard ever deciding on the right DTR – Desktop Replacement – notebook! I didn’t want to pay through my nose for another Macbook Pro. As beautiful as that line’s chassis is, I don’t care to support that fruit company, and that a decked out MBP would have bust my budget by a mile. Besides – after a year of using the Apple OS, I still find it limiting compared to what I can do with Windows 7.
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It was spreadsheet time again, and this time I listed two dozen notebooks – including the Lenovo Thinkpad W510 (there was an amazing good and very nicely priced model from faculty tender but it’s sunk with a relatively low resolution screen), the Sager NP8690 (great specs, very close choice but too thick for me), several HP Pavilion models, and even Acer models for fun.
The final choices came down to:
– Sony Vaio F series (above). OK screen, great build, good thermal control, dreadfully expensive if purchased in Singapore, cheaper if bought from B&H Photo Video but warranty could be an issue then. Blu-ray enabled – hooray! About $2.5K as configured and to reach my door step.
– HP Envy 17 (above). Great screen, great GPU, blu-ray, so-so build with some minor keyboard flex, some thermal issues, crazily overpriced if purchased in Singapore, cheaper if I bought it from Amazon, possible warranty issues. Slightly less than $2.3K.
– Dell XPS Studio 16 (above). The best screen in this range of notebooks, no blu-ray (ugh), finger print magnet, no keyboard flex, some thermal issues, very attractively priced, local warranty through Dell-Singapore. Slightly less than $2.3K as configured.
It was a very close call! I nearly went with the Vaio F but at the last minute decided not to because of user online questions about reliability and that the unit might not had been covered with warranty over here.
After agonizing it on Sunday night, I placed an order for the Dell XPS very early Monday morning today. As configured, the unit comprises an i5-460M, 8 GB of RAM, the fantastic RGBLED screen that from reports surpasses anything the Macbook Pro line uses, and the fairly recent ATI5730. No blu-ray drive though compared to the Envy and Vaio offerings, but oh well. This will be my third Dell notebook, and my thirteenth notebook.
The unit’s expected to arrive at the door step late this week or early next week. Comments to come then.:)
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