Vostro does the business. But where next?

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Turns out yesterday’s fruitless visit to Dell wasn’t quite complete – I had only considered Dell’s consumer offerings. A quick jump to the business section took me straight to Dell’s cheapest Vostro PC, which at £211.60 including VAT and delivery is well within my price limit. So what else can I squeeze into the remaining £38.40?

It’s built around a Pentium Dual-Core E2200, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard disk and integrated graphics. My choices for affordable upgrades are:

• Vista Home Premium – add £20+VAT
• 2GB RAM – add £10+VAT
• from DVD-ROM to DVD-RW drive – add £20+VAT

As useful as it would be, I draw the line at paying more than £20 to upgrade to a DVD writer, so with the first two upgrades selected my new baseline system comes to £246.10 inc VAT and delivery.

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Dell’s Vostro 1310 in the Labs

Friday, May 16th, 2008

This is Dell’s latest take on the budget business notebook, which we’ve managed to get hold of after wearing the numerals off the number keys on our telephones.

Click here for a full review of the Vostro 1310

Initially we were underwhelmed with its bland looks, but on close inspection it seems solid and well put together: the good keyboard, decent build and the understated looks are already beginning to grow on us.

With prices starting at around £330 (inc VAT) for the base specification, it looks as if it could prove to be the Ford Mondeo of the laptop world. Check the reviews section later for a full review.