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Another new toy I recently splurged on was a new laptop! My poor IBM Thinkbad R52 from college is starting to reach the end of its days and my ancient desktop is fairing no better. I heavily considered getting another IBM Thinkpad because of how well my R52 has held together being thrown around everywhere in a book bag at college. But I found their laptops to be extremely expensive to get similar specs (or better) specs from a Dell laptop. And I’ve had decent experience with Dells in the past (both as a computer technician and user) so I decided to stick with what I know best (rather than HP or any other well known brand).
So what did I get? A Dell Studio XPS 16. Even Leo Laporte uses one of these! The specs on mine are as follows:
- Intel Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz (2.8 GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache)
- 4GB, DDR3
- 15.6 inch Wide Screen 16:9 1080p Full HD WLED LCD
- Built in webcam with facial recognition
- ATI Mobility RADEON HD 4670 1GB
- 500GB 7200RPM HDD
- 8X DVD+/-RW
- Bluetooth
- 9 cell battery!
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
This laptop runs circles around my desktop. The i7 processor is a QUAD CORE. Processing pictures in Lightroom on my desktop took forever, but on my laptop it is incredibly snappy! (For reference, my desktop is running an old AMD Athlon single core processor with 2GB of memory.) The screen is amazingly beautiful, whether looking at my pictures or watching a movie. Unfortunately there was no Blu-ray drive option when I built the laptop, so I’m not able to fully take advantage of a HD screen unless I’m streaming HD videos (but neither do I own any Blu-ray DVDs). The 9 cell battery lasts for hours and hours and hours and hours (at least 3+ if it is not processor intensive). I also love, love, love Windows 7. I was the guinea pig for Windows 7 at work and it is the best thing to happen to Windows since XP. Vista doesn’t exist in my mind. I haven’t gotten around to testing out the video card with any games since I don’t play many PC games anymore (hello Xbox 360!), but it should be a decent gaming card (not an Alienware, for sure). My primary intended use of the laptop is for programming and photo processing. Also, a weird side note: the laptop doesn’t have a numpad (not even a function key enabled one).
The only thing I was upset about with the laptop and Dell was the fact that it took nearly a month to receive the laptop. I ordered it at the beginning of February and did not receive it until the end of February (including one delay in the shipping of the laptop).
Overall, I’m quite excited to finally have this blazingly fast laptop in my hands and it has so far met or exceeded all of my expectations!
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 7:41 pmand is filed under computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 4th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
Wow bro! I didn’t realize you splurged on the quad i7 processor! Loving it bro! I’m sure it will be all you’ll need and more
How often did you use the fn enabled keypad on your other laptop? I’ve never used mine.
March 5th, 2010 at 9:26 am
I never use the fn num key pad…. I just thought it was weird to not have it (I’ve never seen a laptop without one?).
I love the quad core. I can really tell the difference in performance vs. a single core.
January 26th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Howdy, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it’s driving me mad so any assistance is very much appreciated.:)