Dell Vostro is here

[Scouzer]

Text

Check it out.

It looks awesome, cheap as heck, and you can opt out of bloatware. You can even disable the hard drive from having any partitions (none wasted on a restore partition) and XP or Vista, your choice.

I'm ticked though, since they are business laptops you can't get Vista Home Premium on them. No good to me!

 

[zig3695]

It looks like dell has release all new laptops! the inspirons are uniform in color! wow! they really do look much better, looking forward to reviews. also, the 06 insprions are still great machines, i bet theyll become very inexpensive now.

 

[tgunner]

The Small Business Vostro doesn't have North American tech support. Have fun trying to talk to Punjimo from Bangalore.

 

[imported_Shivetya]

I like the Vostro slim tower but cannot find information on power supply specs.

It states there is a pciex16 available...

I am looking for something in that size but am leery without knowing what the power supply can do


edit: consumer inspirion is 250w for that chassis

 

[inthell]

will the Vostro 1400 be a good traveling notebook? Vostro 1400 = 1.53" x 13.13" x 9.61 thats pretty small? right..

 

[newbiepcuser]

Originally posted by: tgunner
The Small Business Vostro doesn't have North American tech support. Have fun trying to talk to Punjimo from Bangalore.

Thats weird, I thought Vostro is part of their business line so they would want to keep their enterprise customers happy. Oh well.

 

[inthell]

Originally posted by: newbiepcuser

Originally posted by: tgunner
The Small Business Vostro doesn't have North American tech support. Have fun trying to talk to Punjimo from Bangalore.

Thats weird, I thought Vostro is part of their business line so they would want to keep their enterprise customers happy. Oh well.

They're for Small Office / Home Office customers.

 

[HiME]

Vostro line = black Inspiron?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=139695

They are basically the same thing except you get no bloatware and better customer support. It is also cheaper though, the Vostro line is very flexible in terms of customization.

 

[wlee]

Well, I took the plunge and ordered one of the Vostro 200 Slim machines today.

1.6Ghz Dual Core E2140 CPU
2GB Ram
80GB SATA HD
ATI X1300 VideoCard
22" E228WFP LCD Monitor
Windows XP-SP2

On another note, the boss also approved an order for a Dell pre-loaded with UBUNTU for ME! So now I've gone out on a limb with 2 new "unknown" machines.

Dell XPS 410N
Core2Duo E6600 2.4Ghz CPU
2GB Ram
250GB SATA HD
NVidia GeForce 7300LE VideoCard ( only choice avail )
16x DRDRW
22" E228WFP LCD Monitor
UBUNTU v7.04 LINUX

 

[Trashman]

I'm considering buying this laptop Vostro 1500, in Hot Deals, price is a bit more than i wanted to spend (looking @ used between 300-400) for base price of 599.00 i must consider this as an option.
add the Vista Buisness as OS for extra 99.00

My question for you guys, i have zero knowledge of laptops, by the way.
Are there any upgrades or accessories that i should highly consider besides basic setup.
hardware looks pretty decent, i'm thinking more on warranty. Would i be foolish not get an extended warranty or the "Accidental Damage Service".
Can I still buy extended warranty or the accidental after purchase, if person i am buying it for decides thats what she'll want, like so many days after?

Any info would be cool, I just thinking, used laptop for 350 vs 600 for new, but with 1 yr warranty as well as getting a new machine, with vista, thats worth extra 250 or so.......right?

Specs;

Intel® Core? 2 Duo T5470 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista? Home Basic
15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA LCD Display
1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM
120G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
8X CD/DVD Burner w/ double-layer DVD+R write capability, w/o Roxio Creator
128MB NVIDIA® GeForce? 8400M GS
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Wi-Fi Mini Card
No Webcam Option
High Definition Audio 2.0

Thanx

 

[zig3695]

i would probably just make sure you get the largest battery available. thats something that will effect your use everyday basically. other then that, yes i do think its worth $250 more to get the laptop in new condition, with warranty. i usually dont say that, but with laptops they dont just depreciate in value they also wear out about just as fast.

i had an ibm t40 that i bought for $400 used, put another $200 into it and it ran for about 5 months before it flexed itself into not working anymore. it would have been another couple bills to fix it, and in the end i sold it and lost money on the whole deal. since then i went with a brand new budget dell for $600 out the door and im 10x happier with it. its not as compact or designed as well as the thinkpad, but it simply works better.

i dont think the accidental warranty is totally necessary. if its for a business, and it will be under lots of travel, then yes. if youre just using this laptop as a second machine and you know you will take decent care of it then the regular warranty is fine. even if you break the screen or something, as long as the rest of the laptop is in good condition i doubt dell would give you much trouble in replacing it. i would add at least a year to that 1 year warranty though, im planning to on mine....

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: tgunner
The Small Business Vostro doesn't have North American tech support. Have fun trying to talk to Punjimo from Bangalore.

Their overseas tech support follows the same support tree that their domestic tech support does.

I guess I'm special because I have no problems understanding English with a little Indian accent. Then again, I hardly call support because I'm not a computer n00b.

 

[wlee]

Everytime I've dealt with India, I've managed to get them to skip their "cheat sheet: list of things for me to try, and escalate it. Most issues I've had are Hard Drive Failure. Anyone remem the Western Digital "BB" series ? I know Dell has sent us offers to extend our Warranty on Servers, but I don't recall them ever sending offers for the WorkStations and Laptops. I did order accident insurance on our last couple of laptops. One of the girls managed to spill her soda in the keyboard. On a laptop, that's not a $20 "repair"

 

[railer]

I guess I'm special because I have no problems understanding English with a little Indian accent. Then again, I hardly call support because I'm not a computer n00b.

The Indian tech support is poor. This mostly due to the fact that you have non-native speakers reading off of cookie cutter script cards.

Obviously, if your laptop breaks, and it's under warranty, you will have to deal with tech support, no matter how smart you think you are, unless you want to pay for the parts on your own dime. That will involve spending hours on the phone with Indian tech support, while they read off of cards, even as you know exactly what the problem is. Special indeed.

 

[Trashman]

Thanz zig, appreciate the info.

 

[vtohthree]

I've called Dell tech support numerous times and at all hours of the day(literally, even once at 3a.m.). I've gotten techs from Eastern Europe, India, Phillipines and China, believe it or not, I found the Chinese tech's by faaaar the most understandable in terms of English(It was almost as if they were American), Eastern Europe I had the hardest time understanding, very thick accents. But things are constantly changing, I saw an article in which they said Dell was trying to make sure their tech support would be trained to speak more like an American, paid classes to do so.


Anyways having said that, I don't like the new look of the Inspirons(Vostro) all that much, Vostro does look a little better to me because of the color. However overall it looks less stylish to me, I liked the sleek look of the previous gen Inspiron with the sharper edges and silver accents(build quality was a little different story though).