Goodbye Dell?

After a year and a half of trying to push Dell to change on the Ideastorm site I have done the unthinkable... I bought a Lenovo notebook. I have been looking to buy a new system for myself but my son came first this time. My daughter races four wheelers and has been getting a lot of new toys lately so I had to even things out. He has wanted a notebook for years and since his desktop is a hand me down that is almost as old as he is I figured it would be the way to go. I started looking for a cheap entry level 15 inch notebook that would be good enough for him to play casual games on as well as school work.

I checked out the Dell site and looked at the Inspirons since they advertised a low price of $499. I then discovered that the system was powered by a Celeron processor and decided I couldn't give him a totally crippled system. The next step up was priced at $599 with the following specs.

Jet Black

Intel® Pentium® Dual Core T2390 (1.86GHz/533Mhz FSB/1MB cache)

Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1

Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100

2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz

Size: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)

CD / DVD Writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)

Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini-Card

No Webcam Option

6 cell battery

High Definition Audio 2.0

I figured that I would look around and see how Dell compared to other manufacturer's products. I don't like HP or Toshiba so I decided to check out Lenovo. I ran across a sale on Best Buy's website of a Lenovo Idea Pad for $674 with the following specs.

• Processor Intel� Core(TM)2 Duo Mobile
• Processor Speed 2.0GHz
• Display Type WXGA widescreen with VibrantView technology (1280 x 800)
• System Bus 667MHz
• System Memory (RAM) 3GB
• Hard Drive Type SATA (5400 rpm) 250GB
• Optical Drive Dual-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW
• Graphics Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
• Built-in Webcam
• Wireless Networking
  Intel® PRO Wireless network connection (802.11a/b/g)
• Security Technology
  Face recognition via webcam and included VeriFace software
• Operating System
  Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1
• Included Software
  VeriFace 2.0; EasyCapture 2.5; OneKey Recovery 4.65; Energy Cut 2.1; Adobe Reader 8.0; Power2GO 5.5; Shuttle Center 2.0; Microsoft Windows Live portal

After upgrading the Dell to match Lenovo's specs the price soared to $774. Then I factored in that the Idea Pad has Dolby sound compared to Dell's usual bargain basement sound options and decided on Lenovo. Lucky for me I had a couple of Best Buy reward zone coupons that brought the price down another $30 which almost covered the sales tax. The system is set to be delivered between the 11Th and 16Th so we will see if they are able to meet that date. I know Dell doesn't usually meet shipping estimates so it will be interesting to see how it goes. I figure that the Idea Pad will give me a chance to really check out Lenovo and see if I am going to make a full break and give up on Dell.