I finally decided to get another laptop to compliment my current Dell Latidude C400.
The C400 has been a great ultra-light laptop. At just under 4 lbs, the C400 still has plenty of power (1.2 GHz Pentium III-M, with 512 RAM) for most of my day-to-day computing needs. I had purchased the C400 specifically because of it’s diminutive size and portability—I take it everywhere with me. It’s a true “laptop” system—I do most of my blogging while sitting in my leather recliner with the C400 in my lap.
But, because it’s so small and portable, it also has its limitations: primarily the tiny 12.1-inch XGA display (with an unremarkable 1024×768 max. display resolution). Also, the CD drive and floppy drives are external, which was more of an inconvenience than I had initially thought it would be.
I’m still going to keep my little C400 around: it makes a great airplane laptop, as it fits nicely on the pull-down tray without hanging over the sides.
My new laptop arrived via UPS yesterday (we ordered our new Dells—my wife bought a new one also—last week, and despite living about 20 miles from Dell, it took nearly a week for them to arrive. I offered to drive over and pick them up the day we ordered them, but Dell insisted on having a delivery guy with an old donkey walk them from Round Rock down to west Austin for us).
So, this is the first post using my new Dell Inspiron 6000.
My new system has a wide screen, 15.4″ display with 1920 x 1200 native resolution (a huge difference compared to my C400). Performance-wise, it is a bit more capable with a 1.6 GHz processor and 1 GB RAM.
It also has an internal combo DVD-CDRW drive. With the great resolution and bigger wide-angle screen, the 6000 makes for a great portable movie-watching system. The built in speaker system is pretty good, and the media controls on the front of the system are a great feature.
The only thing I don’t like about the new system so far is that the Delete button is buried amongst a bunch of FN keys—whereas the Delete button on my C400 is in the top right-hand corner of the keyboard (no searching for one of most used non-character buttons on the keyboard). Also, my C400 has mouse buttons above and below the touchpad—and I had used the top buttons exclusively in conjunction with the touchpad. The 6000 only has button below the touchpad—but I’m sure it’s just a matter of getting used to them.
Six years ago I bought a Micron Transport NX PII 330 laptop for what I thought was an unbelievable high price. Well, not thought, it was and still is. But, here I am 6 years later still banging away. I wanted a Dell but they were so back ordered people were waiting more than a month.
I need a larger hard drive but I am reluctant to invest in one because I’m sure my computer will die and it will be a waste. I thought of an external hard drive, but again if my computer dies it will have been an unnecessary expenditure. Then again maybe not. Who knew we would be using hard drives this big a few years ago? Maybe, I’ll get an external hard drive anyway since it can always be used as a backup system for a new laptop. But, I would have to buy a pcmia card to convert my lap top to USB II. It never ends.
*Anyway, you should be able to reassign key and button functions on your new laptop to what suits you.
Left by 2 on August 23rd, 2005 at 11:01 am