As suspected earlier, Dell has finally announced additional product line to its small business called ‘Vostro‘. This is indeed a good sign and long pending activity from the DELL. So far; the only option was Latitude and Precision models and now they have Vostro. Vostro seemed to be reasonably priced and they are below Latitude and which can make the sales to pitch and can help lot of small companies to opt Dell.
I already found couple of good reviews on the Vostro-200 desktop, but yet to see cnet review on this.
As currently I use Macbook pro with Windows Vista under boot camp; I would like to see an alternative in coming weeks (because I boot to Mac OS only for Terminal, so having a laptop PC is much better). If I get a chance, I might buy Vostro 1400 notebook for day to day development in comparison to Macbook pro because:
- It is 14.1 inch screen with 1440X900 resolution (same as that of Macbook pro)
- It is just 5.39 pounds (same as Macbook pro)
- It allows up2 4GB
- It has Wireless-N Wi-Fi
- It has 4 USB ports (Macbook pro bas only two)
- It has full-sized keyboard (I hate the key alignment in macbook pro, especially delete, and all arrow keys)
- It has much better battery life than Macbook pro, if I opt for 9-cell 85WHr Li-Ion Battery
- It has 8-in-1 media memory card reader (Macbook pro does not)
- It has ExpressCard/54 slot (Macbook pro has ExpressCard/34)
- It has S-Video out (Macbook Pro does not)
- It has only 15-pin VGA video connector (Macbook pro has DVI with DVI to VGA connector) (Wondering why Dell didn’t add DVI as default one, unless I missed it, because most of the small business might have external LCD connection)
- One-touch access to calendar, contacts and files in seconds with Dell MediaDirect (not sure how it works)