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My friend had bought a Dell XPS1330 few months back. The machine is quite sleek and weighs less then 2 Kg. But this comes in 13.3 inches screen size which I thought was bit less for me. I also looked at the Dell Inspiron series and they looked ok to me. All this thing was done over internet so I planned to go to Staples (located on Outer ring Road, Bangalore).

There were quite a number of Laptops which were available in the Store so I decided on following configuration as a minimum standard

1)Intel Processor with 1.7 Ghz +

2)2 Gb RAM

3)160 Gb HDD

4)Battery life

5)Processor Type – Core 2 Duo

6)Bluetooth/wireless

This was quite a small list and I added few items (in bold) after having look at features. I would say that in the end it made me realize that after spending 4 years in IT, I ought to have known more things

I had a look at quite a number of brands and made following observations

1)Compaq Presario

Compaq laptops looked to be the cheapest one available in the store with starting price of 34 K. They came with AMD Turion processor and Core Duo Processor.

Pros

Low Price

Cons

Basic configuration, not stylish.

Model Shortisted – C773Tu (1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo T5550 2 Gb RAM, 160 GB HDD ) Price Rs 38,000.00

I would say that this was among the two brands which were least appealing.

3)ACER

This was the other one which didn’t appeal to me.

4)HP

HP gave a lot of options to me. There were quite a lot of models which I shortlisted in the category.

Model Shortisted – DV604TU (1.73 Ghz Dual Core Processor T2370, 15.4 inches, 2Gb RAM, 250 GB HDD) Price Rs 43,000

DV2762TX (1.8 Ghz Dual 2 Core,14.1 inches, 2GB RAM,160 GB HDD) Price Rs 50,000

5)Sony Vaio

Wow!! This was the first words which I said looking at the machines available for display. I would say these were the best looking machine with best configuration but high price. Also Sony claimed to have 4.5 hrs of battery life which is more then HP (2.5 hrs)

Model Shotlisted – VGN -CR35G/36G (2.1 Ghz Dual 2 Core T8100, 2Gb RAM, 200GB HDD) – Price Rs 55,000

Hmm..Now not sure which one to buy. I know it has to be either Dell or Sony Vaio , but both seems to be bit expensive. Dell takes 2 weeks to deliver and also does not have a local service center. As per information available from one of the salesman, Dell laptops are sent to Malaysia for repair and take much time to get repaired (Need to Confirm this).

But I would say that this also allowed me to know more about computer hardware stuff and the latest technology in the market. Say for instance there is a Laptop from Sony (Vaio TZ) which weighs 1 Kg and uses a Flash memory instead of conventional hard disk to store data. Price is mind boggling Rs 1,39,000 only..