I purchased a Dell Studio 17″ for 58,000Rs. I am a big fan of Apple and I am now going to say a sacriligeous thing – Mac is ****ing expensive – atleast in India. Even before I considered the Dell laptop I went over to Apple’s India store and drooled over the laptops – but the ones I wanted were all in 6 figures – over 1.2 Lakhs. The starting price of MacBook was 56,800Rs. I dropped the idea of buying an apple.

So I went over to Staples and looked around. Acer was the cheapest less than 30k. Then lenova,compaq and HPs were in the 45-55K range. Thanks to Vista having the windows performance index – I was able to quickly see how these machines perform without even checking their processor, memory information.

Only Dell had a 5.0 or higher. Dell Studio 17 registered a decent 5.0. The XPS laptops registered even higher. The rest of the pack – HPs, Acers had between 3.5 and 4.5. Also the rest had unnecessary freebies thrown in – audio system, choice to pick 2 gifts from some 10 gifts etc. Thank you very much. It was an easy decision in the end – also Dell had onsite service, whereas for the rest I had to take my laptop physically to their repair workshops.

Coming back to the decision – I feel happier in the end. I feel I got lot of bang for the buck when I compare this with the high end Apple laptop ( which is 3 times pricier ) . Here is why.

1. 17 inch screen vs 13 inch MacBook

2. Biometric sensor ( none of the apple laptops have this yet )

3. Backlit keyboard ( available only in the 1Lakh plus MacBook Pro)

4. 3GB Ram ( macbook comes with 2GB Ram )

5. HDMI output – the day when I get a High Def TV I will pat myself for the choice I made

6. 5.1 output – dont think macs have any

7. 320GB of hard drive space vs 160GB of a MacBook

8. Memory Card reader.

9. Dell support in India.

10. Choice of colors.

1. Apple OS X.

Hmm…I have vista and what a poor copy Microsoft has managed to make. I tried a freeware for expose but its not the real thing. It is jerky and ugly. I have ubuntu running on the other partition and the compiz effects are nice – but still its nowhere close to the functionality and smoothness of OS X.

2. The apple touch.

I remember the ibook I purchased in 2002 ( G3,512MB Ram,30Gig Harddrive ). When I opened it a nice fragrance greeted me – they had sprayed a perfume on the keyboard. Then they had a nice glossy book about OS X, heck even the box that came in looked beautiful. I felt I was ripped but I was happy about it 🙂 And everything is so smoothly integrated and works as one piece – iTunes,iLife,expose – even the terminal is so well behaved.

Anyway if you are trying to decide between a Dell and a Mac – if you have enough money in your bank and your job is recession proof – go ahead and buy a Mac – its worth every paise/cent of it. However if you are in my position where I have to beg/steal/coerce someone ( in this case my wife 🙂 ) to buy me a laptop – get a Dell. 17″ is lot spacious and keep comparing it with an entry level macbook ( which costs the same ) – and you will feel 3 times good about it.

And speaking of 17″ laptop reminds me of this apple commercial

In conclusion – I hope this Dell Studio 17″ helps me buy a 17″ MacBook Pro 🙂