Don’t be  surprised if I say that currently I don’t have a personal laptop. I bought one Dell Inspiron 15 during earlier office days to get over the STC dorms boredom and really didn’t use it more than to watch movies and listening music and later have given to my bro as parting gift. My office laptop is another Dell model – Laltitude D630 and I am pretty OK with it. In the meanwhile, I started feeling the need to own a personal laptop where I don’t have to disconnect office VPN everytime to check facebook and Orkut ;- ) and here the search begins.

Requirements

Like my profession, I zero in my laptop requirements and conclude that I want a desktop replacement with good value of money. Initially tablet fascinates me and with their low prices, they were viable option too but i felt that I really don’t need a light-weight notebook and nor do I am going to use multi-touch screen pretty often.  What I need :

1. A good  HD and RAM with an above average processor so that I can open lot of website while listening to youtube, with torrents downloading and some sort of stats calculations (rarely !) goes at the back.

2. I can play games. I have never been a game freak and last game, I have been crazy about was Age of Empires. I could never control the cars and thus could not appreciate teh NFS beauty though Max payne was a good one. So in essence, I need a laptop which I can use for playing games (not very high end)  whenever I feel.

3. It should have more than average battery life.

4. Two people can watch the movies without tilting and adjusting themselves at some specific angles.

5. Any other add-on like web-cam, Blu Ray disk is always welcome.

7. Should only be of the following brands: Dell, HP, Toshiba, Lenevo, Sony. I don’t want to loose tech support or repair parts in case I have to go to India.

8. It should make a style statement

9. Last but most important: It should be good value for money. I was not having a fixed budget but ready to spend around 1500 bucks for a good piece.

Analysis

After requirement finalization, it was analysis and market research time and before I jump to those details, let me share a wonderful analogy of changing requirements very similar to the projects that I work on. Since I am not laptop geek and the more I read, the more knowledgeble ( confused ?) I become and the  more I tend to change the requirements

I was impressed by couple of  Gateway andAsus deals. However like a good project manager, I restrained the requirements and didn’t move out of initial definition. After that a hectic reserach of the laptop begins where I have read reviews at various websites like CNET, Laptop Reviews, PCMagzine etc and then finalzied two  laptops that were meeting my criteria. The contenders were : Dell Studio XPS16 and HP HDX 16t Premium Series.  It was confusing and to avoid that what I did was more research :- D.

Why did I select Dell Studio XPS16?

I selected Dell over HP even though Dell prices were slightly more than HP. I don’t have any specific reasons, both the laptops were good, i have fallen in love after reading the customer’s reviews. Perhaps I found a better processor and extreme awesome LCD display in XPS which perhaps was not there in HP. Further, being aware of myself and my rough handling of the things, I relied more on Dell rather than HP which produces sleek, sexy laptops whereas Dell is a proven rugged tough producing a beauty this time in the form of Studio XPS.

Special mention should be given on the Dell LCD which has been having stikingly exceptional review quoted as having the highest color gamut that have been tested in this range .The reviewer were surprised at it’s crossing the desktop testing barrier, let leave along the laptops.

Thus finally after reviewing other features like looks  (Dell has provided expensive Leather pad at the hinges!), battery life which was obviously better than HP, i found my soul mate in the form of Studio XPS 16 with a little under $1500 including taxes and other accessories. I am the happy blessed soul

The configuration that i have gone for:

Regards,

PV