RutSum

How Do I Get A Decent And Cheap Dell Laptop In India?

Now that I’ve finally passed out of school, its time that I got a new laptop. My very first choice was a Mac, but ruling it out due to the absurd terms and conditions and high prices, the next choice was obviously a Dell. But the dumb Dell India website and the ‘friendly-but-rigid’ attitude of the Dell officials is making the decision of buying a laptop all the more difficult for me.

First I was bent on buying an XPS M1330, considering that a smaller model would be light, and cheaper too. But I was wrong. No matter how low I configured the 1330 (with a 13.3″ screen), it always remained costlier than the 1530 (with a 15.4″ screen), which in its default configuration was much better than the 1330.

So now I shifted my attention to the 1530, but this too, was a bit out of my budget. So I called up the Dell Sales Team, and told them that I would buy 4 laptops + 2 TFTs from them, which I thought was good enough to be considered a bulk order and so I asked them to give me a decent discount on the purchase. I also emphasized the fact that a discount is possible, and in fact should be given, because on the purchase of a single system from the US, with the use of a discount coupon, I could save around 40% of the amount that I am spending here on a system with the same configuration. But the Dell Sales Account Manager, Kirti Choubisa (Phone : 080-2510 6339, E-mail: kirti_choubisa@dell.com) kept on insisting that XPS laptops are‘premium’ laptops and they cannot be discounted. She however could not answer why their US branch offered such a huge discount (25%) and they offered absolutely nothing. Moreover, she totally refused to entertain my request for no software inclusion. She agreed, in a subtle way, that Dell is stupid and you have to put up with it. She said that nothing can be done about my software issue, and that I will have to buy a copy of Windows Vista Home Basic along with my system. She said that if the crapware included by default in the system irritated me, I should go for a Vostro 1510 which does not include crapware and comes with FreeDOS as the preloaded OS.

Though the Vostro 1510 is a pretty decent laptop, but still it has some limitations which I don’t want in a laptop that I’ll probably be using for the next 3-4 years. I want to buy a durable machine with good ergonomics and a high end configuration, so that I don’t have to upgrade it every 6 months. What do you think I should do? What configuration should I go for?

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