Hello Tomorrow™

Before you shout ‘MacBook Pro!’ - that was way out of the budget I’d set myself (less than £800 if I could manage it), so out of the question from the start. It was, unfortunately, the one that I really really wanted to get. It’s powerful and looks nice, and OSX is a joy to work on, but you have to pay a lot of cash to get it. Sorry Apple, maybe next time.

I don’t buy anything without doing a lot of research and I ended getting myself a top spec 2.2 GHz 17″ Dell Vostro 1700, which as far as specs go is the same (less 0.2 GHz, which I can live without) as 17″ MacBook Pro. Yep, it’s not as pretty and it’s heavier but it’s literally less than half the price (£740 for the Dell vs £1860 for the Apple).

There’s a few minor differences in the number of USB ports and Firewire ports etc, 2.2 GHz vs 2.4 GHz, and the Vostro 1700 NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card uses slightly slower DDR2 memory and not DDR3 like the MacBook Pro, but all things considered it’s just about the same (at least on paper - I wish I had 17″ MacBook Pro to do a side by side comparison with but alas, I don’t)

The Vostro 1700 is more than powerful enough to runs all the creative apps I need it to without a problem, renders heavy 3D scenes quickly (faster than my year old Desktop PC), and importantly to me has a nice big hi-res screen. It’s not up to the standards of a good quality Desktop LCD monitor, but it’s plenty good enough for me. The one I got has a resolution of 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA) which costs extra but is worth it for the extra screen-res you get to play with, and one of the main reasons I got this model. It’s a shiny/reflective screen which some people won’t like, but I don’t mind, and it’s a bright crisp screen to work with.

If you don’t need a 17″ laptop but still want a powerful graphics machine take a look at the Dell Vostro 1500 - smaller, cheaper and lighter but just as powerful, you just loose some screen resolution.

I could have got it off dell.co.uk for around £1000 I think if I’d configured it right, but if you look on Dell’s Outlet store you can probably find the same pc/laptop that you were just about to get but save a few £100 off the main site’s price.

I ended up getting mine new off eBay, for £740 including delivery, which for the spec of the machine is amazing.

I’ve been using it for nearly 2 months now and I can’t really fault it either as a dedicated graphic design machine or as an entertainment laptop.

As with all technology though it’ll be out of date within a year and I’ll be looking for something bigger and better - but with the £1120 pounds I saved by not getting a MacBook Pro of near enough the same spec, I can quite happily justify the upgrade. Or go on holiday for a month. Or buy a second car.

Some Dell Vostro 1700 reviews I found - if you still need convincing…

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3937
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread209058.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=161077