Following on from the recent post where I wrote about the fact my current laptop is/was dying at a great rate of knots, I ended up ordering a new one and it arrived (without prior warning, which is always a bit of a worry) on Friday.

It’s nothing hugely special, just a Dell Inspiron thing, but it will more than fill my requirements for the forseeable future. There’s a twin-core beast of a processor, 4Gb of memory, and a 500Gb hard-drive, coupled to a monitor with a 1600×900 resolution. I got the extended battery, as it’ll still get used on a regular basis while travelling and so on.

And even better, at the time I ordered it it cost me exactly £500. If it lasts like the last one did, it’ll be 2012 by the time I think about getting another one. God only knows what the basic spec will be by then!

It’s got a couple of idiosyncracies – I think the weirdest thing is that for the first time ever, I’ve got a machine that doesn’t have any indicator lights on it for hard-drive, battery charging, etc. It’s *very* strange to not have them – or maybe this is a new trend that I’ve just not spotted ’til now.

As always, I’ve spent time over the weekend copying files over, archiving/deleting stuff, sorting out software installations and the like, but I think we’re pretty much there now. I’m still missing my CS3 install, but I’ll get the disc back for that sometime (and there’s no real hurry) and then it’ll all be done.

So it’s nothing hugely special – but it’ll do, and it cost me less than half what a commensurate MacBook would do. I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got, thanks.

[Update : Having looked at Apple’s on-line store, an equivalent MacBook Pro would’ve cost me from £1,500 – so I’ve got what I need for one third of the price of the Mac.  Can’t think why I don’t want to go Apple, can you?