Week 4 in London - Arrival of my Dell XPS 15 Laptop

8 July 2011, Monday

Life in London - Take Two - Arrival of my Dell XPS 15 Laptop

My Dell Laptop arrived at the security downstairs at Shaftesbury Avenue. Security signed for it and Raymond informed me that security has it. Interestingly, there was another Mr Patrick Woo from the Bank of China which shares the space with Double Negative. Security contacted him and he told them he was not expecting a laptop. ;)

I went down to collect it. It was a pretty big box, enough to hold the 15" laptop. I put it with YC until the end of the day. After work, YC took it to the lobby on the second floor, and I opened it up.

Me, proudly holding the l5" Dell XPS

This little guy's configuration consists an Intel i7 processor, 6GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, 517GB Hard disk, Nvidia GeForce GT540M display AND an Intel HD Graphics 3000 graphics processor on board. It has a JBL subwoofer built into the body and a more sophisticated audio control panel driving the audio chip by Realtek. Instead of the factory default 6-cell battery, this unit has an upgraded 9-cell battery instead. 

I paid £520 for all this, which is a very good deal. It was on sale at the Dell Outlet online store, which is a place to find refurbished Dell sets. Some of them have cosmetic defects like minor scratches, or had the orders cancelled after the units were built. My set has a chip at the lower right corner of the set, but it is almost unobservable. 

Since Dell systems are built to order, the refurbished sets are put on the Dell Outlets as they are. Customers cannot do further customisation to them. There were quite a few refurbished sets of XPS 15 for sale, all slightly different from each other in their configuration (and each having a slightly different price tag as well). 

With a brand new system of similar configuration, it will easily cost over £1000. Similarly, if I were to buy a brand new set from Dell Singapore would cost about SG$2000 or more (Dell Outlet Singapore does not have any stock for XPS laptops).

YC has an XPS 15 which he uses as a desktop replacement. I came to London with just an Asus 900 series netbook, that is almost 3 years old. When I decided to buy a laptop, YC was promoting his notebook and trying to get me to buy the same as his. In the end, I did. Our notebook specs are exactly the same, except for his 15" display, which displays full HD (1920x1080) and has colours calibrated to conform to Adobe RGB colour profile. This he upgraded for $180. From the UK Dell website, they do the same upgrade (on new XPS laptops) for £180!