My new laptop has come. It’s a Dell Inspiron 15z and I splashed out for the Cherry Red version (which looks much more red than the photo gives credit). This is a quick blog about it, expect a more detailed one after more experiments over in my tech blog.
The “15” refers to the size of the screen, actualy 15.4 inch widescreen. It’s got a nice reflective surface on it, and looks to be very clear. The “z” part refers to the lightweight, small, and long battery life version of the inspiron. However, it still has 4 GB of Ram, 320 GB of hard drive and a fairly nice graphics card (512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD4330). The main battery life saving is via the processors, two intel 1.3 GHz processors, about half the power of standard processors, but still very capable for all but the most intensive of jobs.
It’s not an incredibly light laptop like some much more expensive laptops are (this one was about £650), but I’d still call it an extremely portable laptop (if not quite ultra portable). Battery life seems to be around predicted values on dells website. I’ve been using this laptop for about 4 hours already, with wi-fi and dells power saving settings on, and I’ve still got over 2 hours left of power. With the wifi off, and screen at it’s lowest (it’s half way at mo) I’ve seen predicted times of over 7.5 hours.
All in all I’m very pleased with it. As a bonus I’m hoping to count some of my 10:10 commitments to my new laptop!