So my Dell Inspiron 1520, which I had ordered on 08, Jan, finally reached me 22, Jan. (Read about the Ordering here). A full week earlier than the estimated delivery time of 29, Jan, given by Dell, which is very good, but the the cynic in me was wondering whether Dell gives itself too much time to deliver the stuff.

Anyway since I am in Kerala, I had to make a lot of effort to get the machine delivered to me. First I found out an acquaintance of a friend in Coimbatore, and had the parcel delivered there. A person then travelled from Coimbatore to Pallakkad to deliver it to my friend,  who then shipped it to Kottayam in local transportation.

All this rigmaroll because Dell will not deliver in Kerala without a certificate of ownership (Form 16) from Kerala Sales Tax. The sales tax department will not release the  certificate unless you have a valid invoice, which Dell will send only with the Merchandise once you send them the certificate in advance. So we end up in a Chicken and Egg situation, which is very difficult ot get over unless you have freinds/ relatives in Tamilnadu, Karnataka or in Kerala Sales Tax.

That is a lot of effort for a Dell, which I am saying in retrospect after getting the machine.

The machine reached me in one large box, which could easily have carried a desktop late on 22.01.2008. I was eager to open the unit and take a look at the result of my marathon effort. I fended off the day’s hardword crying through my bones and pulling on my eyelids, to cut open the parcel.

Things are very well packed with accessories coming in a seperate compartmented box. The nylon bag which come free with 1520 is well built, but looks cheap, compared to the imitation leather bags that come with HP or Compaq.

The notebook itself is packed in a Thermocol box. I had ordered a nice midight blue colour for my laptop. The unit looks nice from ouside with lovely well finished matt blue color on the screen lid. There is a plasti-chrome latch to open the screen lid, which I thought looked a bit tacky and felt similar with a lot of play. The latch also does not hold the screen snugly with the body of the machine and there is a some 2 to 3 mm up and down movement of the screen lid even with latch closed. Compare this to smilar HP which does not have a latch and screen closes with a help of pressure from a spring loaded cam as you fold the lid and fits quite snugly.

Once the screen is open you are greeted by a swathe of pure brushed aluminium finish (or silver if you prefer). Palm rests are aluminium, keypad and touchpad are also aluminium. The screen is bordered by a thick aluminium finished plastic, the top of which holds the 2 MP webcam and microphone array.

So much aluminium might look good to some people, but I thought that it looks a bit cheap. The Windows and Intel stickers are also very small and unattractive and in my case a bit skewed and do not any value to the looks of the notebook. The palm rests though feels solid with little depression due to pressure. The screen also is tightly fitted with no sideways or untoward movement.

The keypad is nice with uniform key travels  and no sideways play. The touch pad is also quite good with decent screen coverage and dedicated scroll areas. The media buttons located on the front edge are again made up of cheap plastic, with each having a slightly different finish.

My unit came with a 9 cell battery, which I tested, lasted for around 3 hours 45 minutes while playing movies, which I think is good for a couple of hollywood flicks. With this battery the unit weighs a good 2.5 Kgs, which does not make it very portable. The battery itself is very snugly fitted, unlike some Vaio and Lenovo models where the battery moves quite a bit in its housing.

The performance is blistering with booting time almost same as my desktop. The screen is OK with good resolution and around 30 degrees visbililty angle horizontally. Vertically though visibilty angles are very poor with constant adjustment of the screen required with your posture to get the perfect picture.

The speakers are good though lacking in Bass and start losing fidelity at slightly high volumes, this though can be compensated by using excellent set of Creative ear-plugs supplied with the unit.

There are lot of proprietory Dell softwares come with the PC such as Dell Support, which essentially records your sytem configuration and changes to both hardware and software and alerts Dell everytime you log onto the net. This helps Dell have a fair idea of your system whenever you seek support. The Dell media centre is also good and comes with a remote and can be started without booting the computer, so that you can play media without booting the machine.

Dell also supplies you with all the CD’s of the softwares installed on the unit including the Windows XP (in my case), which I think is the first in the market.

Overall first Impression 

The unit as a whole feels well built with very little fan noise and limited heat generation. Looks though are not very sophisticated but not bad also with nice well painted screen lid. HP and Compaqs though with their Cool Blacks, Greys and sophisticated contrasts and Sony with beautifull finish look much better. But this beast offers the best configuration possible for the money paid. HP will take at least another year before they will offer similar configuration in similar price.

Read my other post on ordering a Dell here