Dell Inspiron 1420

So as promised, I figured I’d do a little writeup of my new Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop, which shall see some field use at Fanfest this year.

One of the main reasons I went with a Dell as a laptop is that I’ve had a lot of experience with them in the past through work. They’re pretty solid units overall, so it wasn’t a big stretch to go with one. I’d considered picking up a Toshiba or something through Best Buy, but found the experience there to be too much of a hassle.

14″ seemed to be the perfect size for portability, I really don’t have any need to go much higher than that. This isn’t intended as a desktop replacement rig, since my custom built one is far more than adequate enough for gaming as it is. The high res glossy screen is pretty damn nice, and made for a worthwhile upgrade to the basic matte display.

It came with Vista Home Premium, and once my initial nausea subsided I’m finding I’m liking the OS more than I thought I would. The silly hardware requirements and extraneous CPU use no doubt impact battery life though, but I got a second battery to help with that. My only complaint was that Dell doesn’t provide physical OS media, you only get a restore partition on the drive. Thankfully they’ll courier one upon request, something which I’ve already done.

So far I’m extremely pleased with the purchase. Price wise this is pretty much at the ideal price point for someone who needs a laptop but doesn’t want to spend a kajillion pesos to do so.