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I have some OK machines around the house including a few decent desktop PCs that I use for gaming (although I’ve largely switched to my XBOX for gaming now), have a old G4 PPC Apple Mac laptop running Leopard OS which is still going great, and a few other old laptops lying around.
I wanted to get myself a little laptop purely for programming on. I’ve been designing a new web application (still under wraps… watch this space for something quite exciting in the next few months) and I really just wanted something that was capable of running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition with IIS 7, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Visual Studio 2008.
So I started hunting around to see what decent options there were.
I looked at Apple machines because I really do like their operating system and was thinking I could probably run Windows via Parallels Desktop or something like that… but I had a strict budget of £400-£500…. and that kind of money just don’t go to far over at Apple.
I’ve bought good desktops from the likes of Evesham and Mesh before so I checked past their web sites… Mesh had some OK machines but I still thought they were quite expensive for what they were.
Checked Rock-Direct… too high-end…
I headed over to Dell to have a look around… they are hard to beat if you just want a cheap laptop…
Nevertheless… once I was there I found myself highly tempted by the more expensive XPS 1530… which I had managed to spec up to about £750 quids worth and then I remembered my budget…
Made the final decision to purchase the DELL Vostro 1510 which I managed to get for £370 (inc VAT)…
Complete Bargain!
The machine itself is stylish enough but no design showpiece…there are some really nice elements like the light touch media buttons… just nice! – it’s also substantially lighter than the HP NX8220 that I’d been carting about work for the last year or so…
Specification: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz, 2GB Ram, and 160GB Hard-Disk… Wifi, Ehernet, 4 USB Slots, Card Reader, Slot-Loading DVD re-writer… all for £370… really not bad at all… although I must admit I probably saved a few quid because I had a spare copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition that I got for free from a Microsoft conference just after Christmas that I installed after the new laptop was delivered…
The machine feels solid and stable
The battery life is great too… am getting about 4.5 hours easily…
Screen is great although maybe a little bit dark around the edges when watching DVDs…
DVD Video playback is great also just using the integrated onboard 128MB Graphics…
Really can’t find anything wrong with this laptop – really happy with my purchase and the sheer value for money of the machine!
