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.

TrustedReviews’ Riyad Emeran has reviewed Asus’ new version of its popular EeePC: the new 900 model sports a few new pieces of hardware sure to please those critical of the original version. Starting with what’s obvious, this version comes with an 8.9″, 1024×600 screen, the benefits of which are two-fold; it increases the usability of the system by allowing websites and other documents to be viewed fully without side-scrolling, and also removes the ugly bezel which surrounded the smaller screen of the previous version.

Other nice touches include the 1.3 megapixel webcam, replacing the 0.3 megapixel one in the older version, and the inclusion of a new touch pad, which is not only physically larger, but enables some nifty scrolling features seen in more expensive noteooks: two finger control. You can use two fingers to scroll horizontally or vertically, and you can even drag two fingers away or towards each other to zoom in and out.

Unfortunately for some, the majority of the number-crunching components are still the same, with the 900 model making use of an Intel Celeron 900Mhz and 915GM chipset. The hard drive options have improved however, with 12Gb for the Windows version and 20Gb for the Linux version available. Also, the standard memory installed has been doubled to 1Gb.

The full review, with many more pictures, can be read here.

Well… if you know me, you knew it was coming. Having visited Carly over the weekend, an hours’ drive from here, I was able to relax; reconsidering some recent ponderings, and I realised a few things. While I know I will be tempted, when I have my new toy, to whip it out and use it whenever possible (including when I shouldn’t be); I realised that having it enabled me to at least have the choice of when I wanted to use it.

I decided in the end that I wanted, and maybe even needed, to buy a laptop, to give myself a choice of where and when I was going to do my computing. My desktop system will not be less useful, as it’s still a gaming powerhouse compared to the midrange laptop I’ve bought. It’s just that from now on, my desktop system will probably see a little less use. Though, when I’m at home, it’ll be put to use mostly as a completely overpowered mp3 player, as I can’t go too long without my speakers.

Anyway, what I ended up purchasing was the Dell system mentioned previously, with a few upgrades. It’s a Core 2 Duo 2Ghz with 2Gb RAM, the upgraded 160Gb 7200RPM drive, and the 1280×800 upgraded WLED-lit screen. It includes a fingerprint reader, Vista Home Premium (with Aero OMFG! and a bunch of bloatware), slot-load DVD(+-*%/?)RW, cool touch-sensitive media buttons, and other things I’m sure I’ll find useful (or not). All up it’s costing $1523.06 exactly, which I think its a pretty damn good price.

Having Windows and bloatware is no problem. I’m going to format the drive and kill anything on there before I do use it; maybe I’ll sell the Vista licence key to recoup some costs. Anyone interested? What’s Vista Home Premium (with Aero OMFG!) going for, retail, these days? You can buy it from me at 75% of the sticker price.

Anyway, now that I’ve taken the plunge, I eagerly await the arrival of my new toy.

So, a few things. On account of me taking a job on the other side of the city, and my resolve to use public transport, I started thinking about how bored I got during the hour and a half travel via train and then bus, to work, and then the same in reverse, home again.

I investigated laptops a little, having heard about the ASUS EeePC, thinking it’d be an excellent travelling companion. It’s a small laptop, otherwise known as a subnotebook, which is exactly the kind of thing you want to be using on public transport. I tried one out at a local shop, and while it was usable, felt it wouldn’t meet my needs. At $500, it was cheap, but not cheap enough, taking into consideration its limitations; specifically, the tiny 7″ screen and its paltry 800×480 resolution (which isn’t large enough to fit most websites on). Additionally, the tiny compactness of the unit is both a pro and a con. It means the keyboard is proportionately tiny as well. The keys were miniature, and too hard to type on while sitting still, let alone on a bumpy train or bus. So although it’s a very nifty piece of tech, I don’t think suitable for my needs.

I read about the upcoming HP mini-note 2133; a subnotebook in a similar vein, with both a larger screen and keyboard. It seemed to be right up my alley. A few weeks passed, and it was released. I was excited; but then immediately disappointed by the pricing schemes, the apparently stupidly glossy screen, and its poor performance. I applaud the screen size and resolution (9″; 1280×768!) and the keyboard, but again, other compromises had to be made. The touchpad is tiny with oddly placed buttons, the performance is woeful and the pricing is terrible - the top of the range version goes for about $900 AUD, and boasts a 1.6Ghz CPU, 2Gb of RAM, and 120Gb HDD. All of which still fails to keep up with the near half-price EeePC. Also, you can’t buy the 1.6Ghz version without Windows Vista, which is akin to saying that people who want Linux don’t need as much processing power. Or, it’s like saying that Windows needs faster, more expensive hardware to do the same job as Linux on slower hardware. Anyway, it’s a poor SKU decision on behalf of HP.

So I then turned to larger notebooks, looking at anything in the 10″ to 13″ range, and came across a few models which caught my eye. Many of them were very good, but each time I took a step up in terms of price or performance, the next model up boasted that many more features that I couldn’t step down again. I knew I had a hard cap on the screen size, 13.3″, because anything larger would be simply too impractical for use on my actual lap, as a laptop. I investigated the LG E300 which can apparently be had for around $1200; I investigated the Apple Macbook, the Dell Vostro 1200, and the Dell XPS M1330.

The Macbook is awesome; it’s got the performance, the presense, it’s great. Beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, backed by Apple, and with OS X, pretty much unstoppable. But, the keyboard sucks, and it’s pretty heavy for a small notebook. Not as portable as either the E300, Vostro or M1330. So, it was stricken from my selection criteria. The E300 is an unknown, because I can’t find any brick-and-mortar retailers who stock them. I can’t test one out. I’m not going to spend $1200 on something I can’t touch before buying.

That left the two Dells. The Vostro 1200 has a 12.1″ 1280×800 screen, and aside from that and the exterior styling, is mostly the same as the XPS M1330 (bar the XPS having an nVidia GeForce graphics chipset, with the Vostro sporting a more power- and business-friendly Intel solution). When I went to visit the Dell kiosk to try them both out, I discovered that the Vostro, in overall physical size, was literally only a few millimetres smaller than the XPS.

Which left only the XPS. In terms of price, I can’t really go wrong. Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 160Gb drive, GeForce 8400GS, multimedia keys, DVD, whatever. You name it, it has it. There’s an optional WLED-backlit LCD, which is thinner, brighter, and overall better than its traditionally-backlit counterpart. The thing is small, light, and comfortable, with a near full-size keyboard to compliment the tidy layout of the unit. Coming in at $1600 though, it’s the most expensive of the bunch. With good reason, I suppose.

At the time of writing, Dell currently has an 8% discount on these laptops, so I could actually have one for about $1460. Thing is though, can I justify the cost?

Which is the reason for this post. I’m not really asking anyone to decide for me, I just need to write this all out so I can make a decision. I’ve lived my computing life without a laptop since I started using computers. I used to think of laptops as annoyingly-restricted inconveniences, only to be used in the absense of real computers. I know now this isn’t the case. Many people I’ve spoken to, have read talking on forums, etc, have all said that once they bought a laptop, their desktop machines went mostly unused. That’s really cool and all, but I spent a fair whack of dosh on my desktop, and it’s not exactly broken. It works great, just as good as when I first bought it. Only thing wrong with it is it’s not portable.

Therein lies the unknown. What can portability of computing bring to my life? I could spend more time with family and friends. I wouldn’t have to go home to perform all my computer-related tasks anymore. I could sit in the lounge with my laptop and have actual conversations with my family instead of being stuck in my room. I could take it to friends’ places and get things done on the run. I can, as mentioned earlier, take it with me on public transport. I can lay in my bed and watch movies; and not have to sit in the expensive desk chair I paid for (haha, I just can’t drop the money issue, can I?) — but by the same token, I can go outside and sit under a tree, and compute wirelessly. I will have freedom.

Is that freedom worth $1500 to me? I don’t know.

And this post hasn’t helped. Sigh.