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dolariA great evil was done unto me a few days ago. A great evil indeed.
You see...I paid off all my credit cards. All of them. Every last one. And while I'd bought my dad a new laptop, we had it here in the house "beta testing" it for him. In those two months we'd gotten to rely on that laptop (and after the late and lamented R-Dorothy died, I'd forgetten how damned USEFUL the things were). I waffled back and forth - should I get a laptop, should I save up, should I get a small laptop.
I went to visit Dean the day after Emily left for Seattle, and while I was there, Jill, his girlfriend, showed off her brand new laptop (that house has something like four now). It got me itching for one...but I wasn't sure about wether I should get one or not. I priced one of them - $1500 for a ultra-light portable...I got to the point where I was putting in my credit card number before I said, you know, I can wait.
Fast forward three days, and I get an EMail from Jill. "Hey, Jell, here's some more temptation." Since she'd just bought herself a laptop, Dell was sending her incentives to buy more laptops. One of which was a special - $300 to $500 off three seperate computer models.
I looked at the three models, and they were all pretty good, but the one I really had my eye on was the Vostro 1500. The others had AMD processors, and to be honest, I wasn't impressed with the laptop I'd just gotten dad, which had an AMD, and ran slower than my P4 desktop.
I hemmed. I hawwed, I agonized. My desktop while not actually FAILING like my other PCs had, was becoming obsolete. It has a few good years of functioning in it left (I can always put a PC to work way beyond it's years - my P2 200MHz is sending XViD movies to my TV), but I needed something more.
I picked up the Vostro. $1000 even. $500 less than the ultra mobile I'd looked at at Dean's. And then add the $400 off I got through Jill's EMail, I was looking at a nice laptop for $700 (including tax).
It wasn't very customizable - you got the laptop and a few choices, but not many, and really the only add-on I insisted on was that it have 2GB of ram for my graphics and any other memory hungry programs ::coughSECONDLIFEcough::. I got, ripped open the package, and was INCREDIBLY impressed...
Meet Norman:
(Actually, Norman II, Norman I, the Media Server is being retired..I love how the reflection from the Dell logo looks like "naff.").
Dell Vostro 1500
Intel Core 2 Duo running at 1.4GHz
2GB of RAM
Pretty, yes? But how does it run. What are the REAL benchmarks for this thing?
I was really kinda worried that the 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo might not be much faster than my 2GHz P4 desktop (I hate that the new machines aren't really "linearly" faster than their previous CPUs, more "comparatively" faster), but...wow...I didn't expect what I got from this laptop.
As usual - my standard benchmark is "How Well Does it Play Mortal Kombat II in Mame?" Not much of a benchmark, really, considering that MK2 has been 100% playable on even low end P3s. My Pentium 4 plays MK2 perfectly, even if it flickers from 100% or 80% every few minutes. At the resolution this laptop is (1280x800), though, the speed drops to about 75% to 80%. This machine never wavered - 100% no matter what I did to it.
Playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo PC in DosBox (which even my P4 was coughing and sputtering badly on) also played 100% with no slowdown.
Second Life turned out to be the most telling benchmark. On the P4, I had all my graphics settings turned down as far as they would go, and in graphically intense areas (like my own plot) I would get 4 or 5 frames a second. In Straylight, known to kill PCs, I would get a frame every one or two seconds. This machine? 15 on Ultra Setting, 24 on High. My goodness that's SMOOTH. :D
I'm now seriosuly considering moving my dekstop PC to where the old media center is, and use the Laptop as my main PC. Holy cow this thing FLIES. The only problem I had with it was it seemed the S-video out was just in B&W no matter what Video Setting I chose (NTSC/PAL). Turns out the port is ultra sensitive to what kind of adapter you plug in - and only shows color with one of my cables, but one is enough.
I'm really surprised at what I got from a not-many-options-to-choose from system. DVD-RW, hardwired SD Card slot, firewire. It's much havier than I wanted - I love ultra portables (R. Dorothy was a tiny little thing) and how light they were. Stiil, It's a sweet little system, and I'm thinking I got my money's worth. :)
By the way, this thing doesn't REALLY have any heat sinks or fans - it has a gosh darned muffler and exhaust port. You can warm your hands by the stuff coming out of that vent. :D
You see...I paid off all my credit cards. All of them. Every last one. And while I'd bought my dad a new laptop, we had it here in the house "beta testing" it for him. In those two months we'd gotten to rely on that laptop (and after the late and lamented R-Dorothy died, I'd forgetten how damned USEFUL the things were). I waffled back and forth - should I get a laptop, should I save up, should I get a small laptop.
I went to visit Dean the day after Emily left for Seattle, and while I was there, Jill, his girlfriend, showed off her brand new laptop (that house has something like four now). It got me itching for one...but I wasn't sure about wether I should get one or not. I priced one of them - $1500 for a ultra-light portable...I got to the point where I was putting in my credit card number before I said, you know, I can wait.
Fast forward three days, and I get an EMail from Jill. "Hey, Jell, here's some more temptation." Since she'd just bought herself a laptop, Dell was sending her incentives to buy more laptops. One of which was a special - $300 to $500 off three seperate computer models.
I looked at the three models, and they were all pretty good, but the one I really had my eye on was the Vostro 1500. The others had AMD processors, and to be honest, I wasn't impressed with the laptop I'd just gotten dad, which had an AMD, and ran slower than my P4 desktop.
I hemmed. I hawwed, I agonized. My desktop while not actually FAILING like my other PCs had, was becoming obsolete. It has a few good years of functioning in it left (I can always put a PC to work way beyond it's years - my P2 200MHz is sending XViD movies to my TV), but I needed something more.
I picked up the Vostro. $1000 even. $500 less than the ultra mobile I'd looked at at Dean's. And then add the $400 off I got through Jill's EMail, I was looking at a nice laptop for $700 (including tax).
It wasn't very customizable - you got the laptop and a few choices, but not many, and really the only add-on I insisted on was that it have 2GB of ram for my graphics and any other memory hungry programs ::coughSECONDLIFEcough::. I got, ripped open the package, and was INCREDIBLY impressed...
Meet Norman:
(Actually, Norman II, Norman I, the Media Server is being retired..I love how the reflection from the Dell logo looks like "naff.").
Dell Vostro 1500
Intel Core 2 Duo running at 1.4GHz
2GB of RAM
Pretty, yes? But how does it run. What are the REAL benchmarks for this thing?
I was really kinda worried that the 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo might not be much faster than my 2GHz P4 desktop (I hate that the new machines aren't really "linearly" faster than their previous CPUs, more "comparatively" faster), but...wow...I didn't expect what I got from this laptop.
As usual - my standard benchmark is "How Well Does it Play Mortal Kombat II in Mame?" Not much of a benchmark, really, considering that MK2 has been 100% playable on even low end P3s. My Pentium 4 plays MK2 perfectly, even if it flickers from 100% or 80% every few minutes. At the resolution this laptop is (1280x800), though, the speed drops to about 75% to 80%. This machine never wavered - 100% no matter what I did to it.
Playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo PC in DosBox (which even my P4 was coughing and sputtering badly on) also played 100% with no slowdown.
Second Life turned out to be the most telling benchmark. On the P4, I had all my graphics settings turned down as far as they would go, and in graphically intense areas (like my own plot) I would get 4 or 5 frames a second. In Straylight, known to kill PCs, I would get a frame every one or two seconds. This machine? 15 on Ultra Setting, 24 on High. My goodness that's SMOOTH. :D
I'm now seriosuly considering moving my dekstop PC to where the old media center is, and use the Laptop as my main PC. Holy cow this thing FLIES. The only problem I had with it was it seemed the S-video out was just in B&W no matter what Video Setting I chose (NTSC/PAL). Turns out the port is ultra sensitive to what kind of adapter you plug in - and only shows color with one of my cables, but one is enough.
I'm really surprised at what I got from a not-many-options-to-choose from system. DVD-RW, hardwired SD Card slot, firewire. It's much havier than I wanted - I love ultra portables (R. Dorothy was a tiny little thing) and how light they were. Stiil, It's a sweet little system, and I'm thinking I got my money's worth. :)
By the way, this thing doesn't REALLY have any heat sinks or fans - it has a gosh darned muffler and exhaust port. You can warm your hands by the stuff coming out of that vent. :D
