Business on a Budget: The Dell Vostro Small Office Range Bulky but Not Boring
Looking to establish a notebook niche between its Latitude line of business notebooks and home favourites, the Inspiron, comes Dell’s medium-priced Vostro range. Designed specifically for small office use, these notebook computers maintain Dell’s deserved reputation for reliability and service in its notebooks. With a very low price tag, the Dell Vostro base model attracts. For under AU$1000, the bottom of this notebook range is very well appointed with a strong Intel Core 2 Duo processor featuring 1.8GHz of power and 1GB of RAM, as well as a cavernous 160GB hard disk.
Dell Vostro’s business minded touches make a difference as well. Its full size keyboard is generous and a bright and crisp anti-glare 15.4-inch screen helps make this notebook an effective presentation and portfolio platform. Better, for business users, its top shelf graphics card and optical drive prove the Dell Vostro an effective solution for handling multiple documents, high-end applications and other associated office tasks.
At just over three kilograms, this Dell notebook is hardly a svelte machine, and its clunky lines and curves will annoy some aesthetically minded buyers. The sturdiness this allows is worth the trade off, however, especially around problem areas like the screen hinges and drive ports where its stability is a major plus.
The problem is, that between its relative weightiness and medium-range laptop battery, the Vostro is not a particularly portable machine. Lasting just over four hours at light usage, the battery is decent for this notebook’s price and size, but not fantastic against competing cheap laptops’ batteries. Compounding the issue, the Vostro rather inexplicably does not come equipped with a docking port for desktop use. Still, this is a relatively small and a relatively cheap laptop, and quibbles over its mid-range battery life and mid-range weight are ultimately immaterial given its great price and its above average speed, processing power and service options.
A range of business-oriented add-ons and upgrades, unfortunately, push up the Vostro’s bargain price. Additions do not come cheap. For instance, moving up to a 2.4GHz processor (from 1.8) and Windows Vista Ultimate (over the Home Basic edition) nearly doubles the sticker price of this base model Dell notebook. Still, for those willing to sacrifice some frills, however, the base notebook comes in at a couple hundred dollars below competitors with similar accoutrements. And, for a supposedly mid-level laptop, it sure does feature a fair amount of toys. Included is a 128MB Nvidia 8600M GT graphics processor, which great for high definition DVD movies as well as offering a surprisingly high calibre of gaming performance. Also available are a series of support and warranty offers, including remote and on-site service, both of which help Dell make its rather impressive case to small business customers while also appealing to home users looking to take a half step up from the Inspiron range.
