Now that the holidays are over, several of us are left facing those inflated credit card statements. I too succumbed to the ever so seductive Black Friday sales. I decided to justify, I mean write about one of my purchases.
My collection of tech gear needs a little updating and Dell just so happened to be running a half off special on select laptops. I have been using Dell products for years and am a fan (no they don’t pay me to say this). As a matter of fact, It’s the only brand of PC’s I’ve purchased aside from parts for scratch builds. It wasn’t until September of 2018 during a Microsoft Ignite conference where I switched up my hardware.
It was there I won a Microsoft Surface Laptop, but the Surface won me over as well.
First off, I was blown away by the sleek lightweight design. The cobalt blue aluminum chassis is a stark contrast to the soft color matched alcantara fabric interior. This was a huge departure from my everyday driver. Weighing in at less than half of my Dell Precision 7510 it was still capable of allowing me to work on the go. I like both machines but for very different reasons. The Precision is robust and capable of handling enough virtual machines to run a small demo environment but can be a challenge when traveling.
Similarly, to Goldilocks in the fable of the three bears, I set out to find a laptop that was just right. I wanted something not to heavy but still able to support my workload without breaking the bank. Ideally, I would have customized a Surface Laptop 3 upgrading to 32BG of RAM. Unfortunately, I couldn’t justify the price tag just shy of three grand. I felt more comfortable going with the Dell Vostro 7590, spending almost a thousand dollars.
Although the Vostro is not made solely from a metal chassis, the plastic panels feel study like my Precision. One feature the Vostro brings to the table that the surface left out is the integrated numeric keypad. This may not seem like a big deal to most but for me, it’s just as important as heated seats in a vehicle. The Vostro also offered jut the right amount of ports for peripheral devices.
Because these three machines have a variety of specifications, I thought it would be more appropriate to use a benchmarking tool that rates components on comparable systems. The overall percentile rating is an average of the individual component percentage. The scores are somewhat skewed in this instance because the graphics cards on all three machines are low performing. For me, this isn’t a concern and I don’t expect to play video games with machines. I’ve compiled the specifications and performance results in the chart below.
At the end of the day I am pleased with the Vostro but will most likely continue my quest for the perfect laptop. What about you? What is your favorite laptop or Black Friday purchase?
