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Ras buys a laptop
I have finally decided to enter the mobile age by changing my secondary PC to a laptop. Why? It's smaller, less noise and can be carried around easily. This is something I have been planning for quite a while now, but I finally decided to go ahead as I saw the ad by Dell in a Finnish PC magazine, in which they had a special offer that Dell Inspiron 8200 laptops will get free 15" UXGA display and DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive upgrades. This of course sounded great, especially as I had already planned to get a Dell Inspiron 8200 as they were recently the only one to offer laptops with ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 GPUs. However about 2 weeks ago I noticed that Fujitsu-Siemens had also come out with a new laptop that is powered with the same GPU (sidenote: so far only Dell and Fujitsu-Siemens have published products with the new ATI Mobility Radeon 9000). When I was customising the system with Dell's online shopping tool, I noticed that the order would mean that I have to pay customs and it would take time before I would get the system (not that I'm in a hurry). Also reading the TOS made me even more sceptic as it was confusing, so I decided to go back to Verkkokauppa.com and check out the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D8820 as I was almost sure that I could get a quite similar system from Fujitsu-Siemens too. By buying an additional 256 MB DDR memory chip and Win XP Pro OEM Eng, I did get similar system like the customised Dell Inspiron 8200. The only difference is the display as I now get a 15" SXGA+ display, rather than that 15" UXGA display. The other con is that I only get a 30 GB HDD, so I decided to get a 120 Gb external FireWire HDD by Iomega that I can use for storing files at home. So the price is cheaper without the external HDD, but I'm pleased with the system as the outlook is IMHO better than Dell's dark gray and black mixture. 
Oh, and for people like Asher and Urban, here are the specs...
Intel Pentium IV 2,53 GHz
15" SXGA+ TFT
256 MB DDR RAM
30 GB HDD
24/24/16/8x CD-RW/DVD combo drive
ATI Moblility Radeon 9000 64MB DDR
MS Windows XP Home Edition Fin
MS WorkSuite 2002
Norman Virus Control
Norman Personal Firewall
2070 € (inc. VAT)
But those are the specs without my modifications which mean that the RAM will be 512 Mb and I replace the Finnish Win XP Home Edition with a fresh Win XP Pro Eng installation (Linux will come later, maybe). Also the two external gadgets are the HDD by Iomega and Creative Extigy.
As my order shipped today, I can expect it tomorrow morning between 7-9 AM (Finnish time) as the postal service gets it here.
I'll post some comments about it and maybe even try to get some benchmarks (3DMark 2003 and SiSoft Sandra). However I can't get any pictures as my switchover to a digital camera is delayed as the Olympus I ordered is no longer available. 
It did get abit tight on my budget, but as I'm getting rid of some stuff and sell my secondary system, it's not a problem. 
So now I just hope it was a good buy and that it's good for desktop and travel use.
Oh, and for people like Asher and Urban, here are the specs...
Intel Pentium IV 2,53 GHz
15" SXGA+ TFT
256 MB DDR RAM
30 GB HDD
24/24/16/8x CD-RW/DVD combo drive
ATI Moblility Radeon 9000 64MB DDR
MS Windows XP Home Edition Fin
MS WorkSuite 2002
Norman Virus Control
Norman Personal Firewall
2070 € (inc. VAT)
But those are the specs without my modifications which mean that the RAM will be 512 Mb and I replace the Finnish Win XP Home Edition with a fresh Win XP Pro Eng installation (Linux will come later, maybe). Also the two external gadgets are the HDD by Iomega and Creative Extigy.
As my order shipped today, I can expect it tomorrow morning between 7-9 AM (Finnish time) as the postal service gets it here.
I'll post some comments about it and maybe even try to get some benchmarks (3DMark 2003 and SiSoft Sandra). However I can't get any pictures as my switchover to a digital camera is delayed as the Olympus I ordered is no longer available. It did get abit tight on my budget, but as I'm getting rid of some stuff and sell my secondary system, it's not a problem. So now I just hope it was a good buy and that it's good for desktop and travel use.
That's why I install Symantec's Norton SystemWorks 2003 Pro and sell all the original software to some poor computer newbie. 
Evil Tripgot!
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