The laptop that is a desktop. Review on Dell Inspiron 6400

When I started to look for a new laptop (my current laptop already celebrated its 4th birthday), my considerations were hp, lenovo, dell. Compaq (although taken over by hp) doesn't come anywhere near hp. I'll start with how I eliminated hp and lenovo before landing up with dell.

I bought a hp dv1615ts laptop for my dad just a month ago before I bought my dell. At that time, I had visited the showroom which was a multi-branded store and had checked out acer, compaq, hp and lenovo. Except hp none of the others even had an option of adding the DVD writer and none had a Centrino Core Duo processor. So I decided to postpone my laptop purchase since my 4-yr-oldie is still doing good except for the floppy drive, CD drive and screen brightness gone lower over the years.

April 15th was the day I saw an ad in the Economic Times saying Dell introduces for the first time in India Laptops with Centrino Core Duo processors. Was very excited at first. But the fact that I couldn't check out the laptop at a showroom like I did for other brands put me off. And again the same ad a week later announced a special offer for ICICI Bank Credit Card customers to pay in 9 equal installments at absolutely no interest. This excited me even further to order the laptop immediately without any further delay. The fact that I need not have to shell out the whole amount in a day made getting the OK-nod from daddy easier.

The next hurdle is whom to ask, how to order, how to make payment, and how sure can I be of the order placement. A couple of friends in Bangalore said the service of Dell is awesome and there's absolutely no need to worry. But they weren't sure if Dell had a service center in Chennai. They were of the general opinion that all metros should be having one anyway since they don't have franchisees. This was not a convincable reply, and so I thought I'd contact Dell directly. This is where I was impressed. The toll-free number was answered in a jiffy and a sales executive was put on the line within a minute. I first generally enquired about the mode of payment, delivery time, and service related queries before I told him I'm going to actually buy it. I just gave my contact details and disconnected the line.

Surprise! As soon as the phone was on hook, an email arrives in my inbox with the quotation for the laptop. That's pretty quick ain't it! It was a big quotation running to 3 pages clearly describing the total specifications of the laptop and they were impressive. I had asked about a Bluetooth module and adding a DVD writer and he had added them to the specs as well. Only about 2k extra for these extra features. Amazing again! Impressed Again!

I showed my dad the quote and told him about the 9-month interest-free offer and immediately he gave the go-ahead. The quote was around 56k, he asked me why it is costlier than his hp which is 53k. I explained to him only about the Duo Core and that itself is worth the 3k. So making any more upgrades is out of question. By default it had 60GB, 512MB Ram, which I would have preferred to increase to 100GB, 1GB Ram. Since I didn't want my laptop to be too costlier than my dad's I opted for the default configuration.

My next call was to place the order. The same guy answered the phone call after I quoted the quotation number to make the ordering task easier. I opted for the 9-month scheme and he said he is sending some documents to be signed and returned the same day. It was already the end of the month and the last working day of the month he reasoned (the interest-free scheme was valid only till april 30). When I said how can I courier the documents duly signed to reach him the same day from chennai to bangalore, he gave me an option to sign the documents and fax the same to him. That was an easy job. After putting the phone on hook, checked my email, took a print out of the authorisation letter to the credit card company and signed the relevant pages and faxed them before 5pm. The ordering process was butter smooth, the only disadvantage being not having seen the product before actually buying. But that is Dell's strategy. Everything is made to order.

I was sent an order confirmation and given an order reference number by which I could track the movement of my laptop. When I checked after 5 days, the laptop was built(1 day), tested (3 days) and said shipped from Malaysia. Cool! The guy had said it'll take anywhere from 12-15 business days for the laptop to reach you. I thought it would be earlier. But it really took 14 business days.

After the laptop arrived at Dell's Chennai office a lady from there called me up to inform of its arrival. I immediately gave the instructions to reach my place and got the package next day. I didn't open the laptop because installation was to be done. I know they'll just open and switch on the laptop, check if everything is ok and say installation is over. But still I wanted them to do it, since I didn't want any warranty related issues later. I had to make repeated calls to the Chennai office from Thursday till Saturday morning for sending somebody for installation. Finally the lady agreed to send the guy on Saturday only although being a holiday I'll ask the guy to come, some crap she said. Finally the guy came at 11 o clock (supposed to come at 10), did what I thought he'd actually do. Open up the package, boot up, check if everything is ok, and got a signature on the installation successful report. Installation was the only part where Dell failed to impress me.

The card reader was the first exclusive hardware that I got to test. Then the media direct 2.0 feature which lets u play audio and video without actually having to boot into windows. A cool feature when U r travelling. U can watch a movie without any pop-ups disturbing you. :-)

The screen is bright and lively (opted for the TruLife feature). The screen is awesomly big 15.4 inches widescreen with a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. Haven't really tested the core duo capabilities yet. But as such am finding the speed ok even after keeping many applications open. The touchpad is the softest I've come across. The buttons below them are also the softest. They don't have that tuk noise found in most other laptops. Instead they are as soft as keyboard keys. The keyboard is big and comfortable but I feel the keys are a little pushed to the right. My left hand sometimes aches. If it were pushed to the left a little (i mean the whole orientation of the keyboard), it'll be fine I guess. One gr8 advantage over the hp is the media controls are outside on the center letting u skip songs by just pressing the outside buttons without having to open the screen.

The stereo speakers are loud enough but tend to have a jarring effect if the sound is above 50%. Below 50% itself, the sound is so loud. So didn't matter to me that much.

The wireless 802.11g doesn't connect automatically to the preferred network the first time you switch it on. Only after switching it off and on for a couple of times, it connects automatically. The irony is the first time if you try to connect manually also, it won't work. Don't know what is wrong. But I'm sorta used to switching it off and on a couple of times every morning.

Ok I guess this will be the longest review on mouthshut. I'll wind up here. If anybody needs any unbiased suggestions/comments on buying a new laptop don't hesitate to leave a comment here or send an M2M to me.

Thanks guys for reading this far.