Brian's Brain

I've mentioned in several past blog postings how happy I am with my recently acquired Dell Inspiron 700m laptop. A few weeks back my next door neighbor emailed me from work, mentioned that he'd given his HP laptop to a friend and was looking for a replacement system for personal use, and asked me what I had. A week later he told me his 700m had just arrived; he'd bought it sight unseen and with absolutely no research save my brief recommendation. Fortunately he's happy with it.

Over the past few weeks my wife's been putting an IBM ThinkPad X40 review system through its paces. She loves its light weight and small form factor, although she's not thrilled with its mouse pointer button (she's dealt with bad bouts of carpal tunnel syndrome-like tendonitis in the past, and in comparison to a touchpad it causes her pain if she uses it for too long). I'm not terribly impressed with its HDD subsystem; IBM chose a 1.8" HDD for the X40, which enables it to be smaller and lighter than the X31 (which uses a 2.5" HDD) but also means it has lower capacity and slower RPM performance than a 2.5" HDD would have delivered. And you pay big-time for the weight and size savings; the X40 is $1800 and doesn't integrate an optical drive.

The X40 is quite a bit faster than the Fujitsu Lifebook P2110 she's been using since Christmas 2002, though, and after using the IBM ThinkPad she decided she really needed a new computer of some sort. So (you guessed it) we decided to buy her a 700m of her own. Last Wednesday evening I received notification via Techbargains and several other RSS feeds I subscribe to that at 6AM PST the next morning Dell was going to release a "$750 off $1500+ laptop" coupon that would expire after $10,000 systems had been sold. I set my alarm for 5:45AM, stumbled out of bed the next morning, poured a half mug of coffee down my throat, tossed $279 in options onto the base system to get it above the $1500 level and placed my order. At 6:48AM PST the offer expired. 10,000 systems sold in 48 minutes, with very little promotion, very little advance notice and no mention of the deal on their website. Incredible.

An Inspiron 700m with DVD burner and XP Pro upgrades for $757. No sales tax to California, and free shipping. How'd I do? Sometimes obsessively checking one's RSS feeds pays off....