The story: Dell XPS M1330

So, as you may’ve recently read, I decided to order myself a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. For a few reasons, I’m keeping track of the whole process. It’s the first laptop I’ve ever purchased; it’s the first computer system I’ve purchased from a big brand-name; and it’s the first time I’ve bought something that cost more than a few dollars over the internet.

Accordingly, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the entire process.

• April 13th (Sunday), midday

  I placed my order using Dells configurator website around lunchtime. It went without a hitch, and shortly thereafter I received a few e-mails. One detailed the system I had purchased and provided an invoice, and another explained the Dell order processing and delivery system, and promised that Dell would keep me up to date on what was happening.

• April 13th (Sunday), mid-evening

  Around seven or eight o’clock that evening I received a call from Dell to inform me they were having trouble processing my credit card details. Turns out I’d entered them incorrectly; so I gave them the correct information and all was well.

• April 16th (Wednesday), mid-afternoon

  I received an e-mail informing me that my payment had been accepted, the system build had been completed, and my laptop was on its way. The e-mail provided me a link to Dell’s order tracking website which illustratively showed what was going on.

• April 17th (Thursday), late evening

  Checking the dell ordering website as above, it’s been noted that my laptop has arrived in Australia and is now with the local courier. The estimated arrival date is still April 23rd; presumably it’ll be heading up from Sydney via a not-so-fast courier.

• April 18th (Friday), mid-afternoon

  I was at work and received an SMS from my sister to let me know my laptop had arrived. Awesome!

• April 19th, mid-morning

  I arrived home to find my laptop, as promised. I opened the box and was surprised to find some extras that I hadn’t anticipated. Dell has seen fit to include: an IR remote control, some Creative in-ear headphones, and an organiser of sorts which has room inside for a pen, a storage area A5-sized paper, CD-wallet pages, and a microfibre cleaning cloth with its own holder. What really surprised me though was that in the A5-paper holder came two user manuals : an XPS M1330 owners guide, and a Dell Computers and Monitors Guide. The XPS manual is fully illustrated and instructs users on how to do everything with their new laptop. Also included, surrounding the laptop, is a carrying case, though it doesn’t have a handle or shoulder strap. All of the included accesories are emblazoned with the “XPS” logo so nobody will mistake your new toy for a vanilla system.

• April 19th, early afternoon

  Turned the system on, was surprised to note that the battery came fully charged. I’ve thrown in my XP CD and wiped away all of the Dell partitions; the 10Gb recovery partition, the 20Gb Vista partition, and the 2Gb Dell media centre partition which contains software that specifically allows the laptop for use as a media playback device. Dell handily provides XP drivers for all the hardware in the laptop on its support website.

• Aprtil 19th, mid-afternoon

  With XP installed, it’s now time to install Arch Linux. Installation was interesting. First off, when installing the packages, it seemed to lock up, so I rebooted. I then spent the next hour trying to figure out why GRUB wouldn’t install; it was complaining about files missing. Reason being was because before the package manager had installed anything, I had rebooted. Then, when I restarted the install, I went from the same step, without mounting any drives. Therefore I hadn’t actually installed anything to my hard drive, and GRUB was broken.

• April 19th, late afternoon

  After I figured out that dumb problem caused by me, I got everything setup and got the wireless working second go (after disabling encryption on the access point – I was too tired at this point to bother fiddling with that). I installed X.org and GNOME.

• April 20th, morning

  Continued setting up Arch — soo many things to configure. Decided to pop into XP to install all my drivers. I’ve been using the system on battery and am quite happy at the rate with which it’s consuming power. I think I should get about 3 hours out of the 6-cell battery with normal-heavy usage; and probably just shy of four hours with minimal usage.

So, that’s that for the setup. It’s going really well so far. The screen is awesome. I got the special WLED version which uses a different, LED-based lighting mechanism for the LCD panel. It’s meant to give much better contrast and lighting properties, and I think it’s doing that job well. I also got myself the 7200RPM hard-drive instead of the 5400RPM one; I’ll never use a 5400RPM drive again in my life if I have to. They’re much too slow.

Overall I’m very happy with the entire process. Now all I have to worry about is enjoying the freedom my laptop now gives me.