Have been waiting a good deal and definitely didn’t expect it to land here so early, but as I mentioned my laptop arrived yesterday.

And as I was really anxious to get started on it, I called up Dell and asked them to send an engineer over today itself.

He came over and completed the installation and checked the entire system. Dell has a nice diagnostic CD that checks everything.

Windows Vista Home Basic Edition seems to be decent so far.

I was a little irritated that the C: is 100GB and the inbuilt shrinker didn’t work. It’s great that I will have (in another 12 hours) an external 120GB hard drive and a 2GB pen drive.

That’s a picture to the right. If you’re looking for more pictures, then check out this Flickr photoset and for those interested, the configuration.

One of the “benefits” of being in my choir is the regular treats that we get. This time it was cause of Sharon‘s birthday which was on Sunday. She fed us wafers, cake, samosas and cold drinks on Tuesday. I skipped dinner

We had practice on both Monday and Tuesday in preparation for Good Friday. Our line up is good (as usual). There are a few of our legacy hymns as well as some new ones so practice is needed.

This is going to be my last Holy Week in Mumbai, atleast for the next two years so I’m going all goes well.

I also joined the the SCMHRD community at Orkut, so spend a good amount of my time in the forum there. It’s good to get to know some of my future classmates.

And, my laptop arrived today! Atleast the box did. Hopefully, the engineer drops in tomorrow so I can start playing with the baby.

It would be more appropriate to have used the word “ordered” but I think “bought” shall pass. I also intended to post the details later but demand for the same has prompted this post.

I’ve never been a laptop person. I find them too cumbersome and prefer the computer with all it’s individual units. However, MBA makes it necessary for me to have a laptop and so I began my hunt for the same.

I had my eye on three brands viz. Dell, Lenovo and HP Compaq. Dell has a shipping duration of almost a month, while I believe Lenovo and HP are quicker in this respect. But, since I had time in my hands Dell was a good option. Have also received good feedback about Dell from two of my friends. Lenovo bought the IBM Think brand so I guess those are good. And my experience with HP Laptops has also been good.

So the main deciding factor was price in which Dell definitely beat the others.

Enough background details, here is the configuration of the laptop I picked up.

• Dell Inspiron^TM 6400 Notebook
• Intel^® Core^TM2 Duo Processor T5500; 1.66 GHz, 2MB Cache, 667 MHz FSB
• Genuine Windows Vista^TM Home Basic 32 bit (English)
• Intel^® 945 Chipset
• 120 GB SATA Hard Drive
• 15.4" Wide Screen XGA TFT Display
• 1024MB (2 X 512MB) DDR2 SDRAM
• 256MB NVIDIA^® GeForce^® Go 7300 TurboCache
• Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities
• Dell^TM Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module
• Intel^® PRO/Wireless 3945 Dual Band 802.11a/g 5 4Mbps Wireless Mini Card
• 90W AC Adapter
• 6-cell 53Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
• Internal 56K Modem

I was able to get the laptop for around Rs. 62,000 including taxes. Dell had a special promo running wherein I saved nearly 10,000 because I got an extra 512MB RAM, the DVD Writer and Rs. 4000 off!

I also made sure I took the 256MB GeForce card to ensure that the laptop stays top speed even if I graduate to higher versions of Windows Vista in the future.

Today made me poorer, for now atleast.

Sent off the acceptance letter to SCMHRD and the folks from Dell came over and picked up the cheque for my new laptop.

I’m not sure what the next step in the SCMHRD formalities are, so time will tell.

As for the laptop… she should be here in a month