Just ordered a Studio 15 laptop!!!

But it's not for me..lol. I have ordered it as a present for my girlfriends 21st Birthday and it is a suprise so I REALLY hope she likes it. For the money it was definitely the most stylish laptop I could find. It's an upgrade from a 3 year old Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pro with 512mb RAM, 1.6 Pentium M and 60GB HDD w/ Integrated graphics. So it should be a pretty big boost in performance.

She is an international History/Politics student so mostly uses her laptop for general tasks such as email and web browsing and writing up her assignments, so the studio I spec'd should be more than suitable.

Also with her 60GB HDD she has used only about half of it and that includes her 10gb-ish mp3 collection, so 160gb I thought would be plenty.

Studio 15
Ruby Red Lid
Core 2 Duo T5750 2.0 Ghz CPU
2 GB DDR2 RAM
160GB HDD
1200 x 800 Screen Resolution
256mb Radeon HD3450 Dedicated Graphics

I was almost tempted to go for the backlit keyboard but at £30 it didn't really seem to be worth it.Then I considered the 250GB HDD, but since she hasn't even came close to filling 60GB it wasn't worth it.

I plan to upgrade her RAM to 3GB soon because I am going to upgrade my XPS from 3GB with a 4GB Stick and keep the 1GB then give her the 2GB from mine. Dell wanted £30 to upgrade from 2GB to 3GB but I may aswell stick that money towards my 4GB stick for the XPS

I know she has always liked the idea of a red laptop, so thats why I went for that colour.

I think this should be a nice upgrade for her in terms of speed, cosmetics and general quality over the 3yr old Fujitsu-Siemens.

I hope she loves it lol! She is just going into her final year of the degree so she will be doing a lot of writing for her dissertation, the idea time for a nice new laptop. I'm glad I have my XPS for when I start my Postgraduate Degree at the start of October, just makes you feel good when writing stuff haha.

 

Wow thats a nice gift. I'm sure she will like it coming from that older laptop. Good idea on the ram. I doubt she will need anything more then that.

 

Im sure she will like it. Did you order from the outlet?

 

So I don't mean to scare you, I LOVE my studio 15, but I just wanted to suggest that maybe you do a clean install of vista if you know how. My laptop was barely functional before I did that. It was freezing about every single day or at least every other day and all I really do is browse the internet, listen to music, and do homework. Also, you can get 1GB and 2GB SD cards pretty cheap now and I thought maybe since you were spending a bunch of money on a new laptop for her, you could save some cash by using readyboost instead of buying more RAM right away.
Just my two cents.

 

She will love the Red, it is absolutely great. Enjoy the new laptop, it will be quite an upgrade from what she is currently using.

 

How much impact does Readyboost have on the System performance? Is it fast enough to go for the 2GB RAM option and buy the cheaper flash memory. Arent the access times slower for flash memory than the RAM?

 

Readyboost is a waste.

 

I have no idea. I never knew about it until I got my computer (had XP before). I am wondering the same thing...

 

Yea, thats what I thought. Because reading and writing from flash memory is usually slower than a defragged HDD and far more slower than conventional RAM. I have never used Readyboost , but I dont think it can give much of a performance boost as Vista claims.

 

yep i can do a clean install no problem, il do that after iv given her it though because i want her to be the first to open it.

I ordered over the phone but specd it up online. Paid 449 inc delivery for it with the free colour upgrade.

Not a bad price. The closest contender to it was the sony vaio NR but i though the studio 15 looked better even though its a bit thicker!

 

congrats. never thought about giving a girl a lappy before. useful and thoughtful. good idea on letting her open it first lol.

EDIT: even if the gadget fiend in me would have been tempted to open it from the bottom so she couldnt notice....*cough* i mean yeah......

 

Haha she doesn't even know shes getting it so obviously isn't excited for it but now that I know the order has been placed I can't wait for it to get here...Even if I won't get to see it until her birthday lol!!

Just hope theres no problems when she opens it as it would be annoying if it had to go back to be swapped. But my XPS M1530 was perfect when I got it so heres hoping its the same with the Studio

Can't wait to see the red