Kristina Lim

On second thought, the Dell XPS M140 seems pretty good. Yay!

I have been working with a rather defective [HP] Compaq Evo N800v for quite a while now. I got my notebook around three years ago, right before I took the plunge into college. Only three years of use, and now, the battery is busted, I get a hard disk failure warning upon boot, there are dents and cracks all over the chassis, most of the black, rubber paint is gone, and I suspect that the RAM is no longer well either. All wonder how my laptop got to that condition, but it is also a wonder that I am still able to use it. I have already gotten tired of periodic, hardware-related system crashes, having to repartition my hard disk every once in a while to try isolating bad sectors, having to backup my data each time I repartition, and having to reinstall an OS afterwards though.

Just this month, my father got himself a Dell XPS M140. Upon realizing that the notebook has too many features that he is not likely to make use of, however– a CD/DVD writer, a removable memory card reader, 1 GB of shared DDR2 SDRAM, and even the 40 GB of hard disk space –and upon learning that my computer is no longer well, he talked me into switching laptops with him. He told me he was not going to use the computer for much anyway: he just needs a word processor, and he is going to be okay. I, on the other hand, need and will be able to make use of more computing resources, which the XPS M140 offers. Because it is the more practical thing to do, we agreed to switch.

I am looking at the specifications of the XPS M140 right now, and I could not help feeling bad. First of all, the laptop is too bulky. I am not picky when it comes to aesthetic design of devices, but bulkiness is another issue. Second, it weighs 5.47 pounds, just a little lighter than my current 5.6-lb laptop, which is already too heavy to keep bringing around. Third, I cannot help thinking of how much the pre-installed software packages, which I will not be using anyway, added to the cost of the laptop. Fourth, the 1 GB of RAM is too much even for me, as I am not a gamer. Fifth and last, I really would have appreciated it if the laptop came with at least a built-in wireless device.

Dell XPS M140 has a number of features that I do not really need, and it lacks some others that I really want. But that’s enough for now: I’ll postpone all complaining until I see the laptop for myself. I really wish my dad had consulted me or any of my sisters before getting it though.