X60MV Pro or Dell Studio 17?

[Boy Wonder]

With a price difference of the best part of £100 (Dell = £629; Novatech = £718 inc XP) plus more RAM (4 vs 2 gig) and hard drive space (320 vs 250 gig) is buying the Dell a no-brainer or am I missing the point - are Dells to be avoided at all costs?

For the record, the laptop's required as a desktop replacement for general non-gaming activities...

Input and advice much appreciated.

[NeilX90]

I wouldn't say Dell should be avoided at all costs but there are a few things to bear in mind.

The X60 is a Clevo chassis, considered the manufacturer of the best quality laptops available - not the most stylish, though, but beautifully made. However, the Dell X17 improves on the woeful bendy plastics that usually issue forth from their Irish assembly line and does look very nice (I've seen one in bright red which... I have to admit.. I really liked !)

Novatech offer limited customisation options to keep the price down - bear in mind the X60 is marketed and sold by other laptop manufacturers under different names... and higher prices than here. The Dell has an excellent range of options.

But there's one deal-breaker on the Dell for me:

The customer support. If your Studio develops a fault, I suspect you will not enjoy the India-based call-centre experience. You know, the one where the line drops halfway through the phone call and you get a different person the next time round who repeates the same asinine questions you have already spent 30 minutes answering... been there, done that. The reason I bought a Novatech X90 instead of its Dell counterpart, the XPS M1730 was for build quality and customer service.

If your X60 breaks, you can phone the people who built it. In England. And I don't mean the sales guy or gal.. I mean the people who screwed it together.


Dell:

+
Good build quality (for a change), excellent options, stylish and excellent value for money. Excellent discounts on the already good price if you are a good haggler on the phone to the sales agent - do not pay website prices.
-
Appalling customer service, mass-produced, never quite gets the performance from all of its components; standard Dell.


X60:

+
Superb hand-built quality, excellent support, great performer, cheaper than the same machine from other manufacturers.
-
Limited range of options, styling a little out-dated, appears expensive next to similarly specced-competitors.



My honest opinion is... if your laptop is going to stay in one place and never move, and you're not too fussed about performance, then.. the Dell might be better value for money. It is also a bit flashier, with backlight keys and great paint. Set it up and hope nothing ever goes wrong with it. I'm sure most Dell owners are quite happy.

If you need something more robust that will perform better on the same components (you don't say how you've specced each machine), with superb customer service then the X60 is the one to get.

Any help ?

[JDowdall]

lol neil is quickly becoming our resident laptop guru :) keep it up man, a lot of the core forum junkies have no idea about the laptops :)

[Jonny2Bad]

Worth mentioning the fact the Dells have a great quality screen though.

[NeilX90]

Indeed they do, but there's nothing to choose between the Clevo and the Dell in that area imho. Although... I think the 17" Dells can be specced with a 1920x1200 screen....

[Boy Wonder]

Neil, thanks for your analysis, just what I was after. I have read elsewhere that Dells sometimes don't quite live up to their potential so i'll resist being seduced by the better headline spec and plump for the better build quality of the Novatech..

Much appreciated.

[NeilX90]

Glad to be of help. Bear in mind that you can always buy and fit extra RAM or a larger HD to the X60 yourself, should you need it, for not a lot of money.

I would certainly recommend fitting 4Gb of RAM if you intend to use Vista as it will make your machine very much nicer to work with. I do find it hard to recommend Vista to laptop users, simply because of the resources it uses, but the X60 will be... ok.. with it.

I think you've probably made the right choice, although the Studio wouldn't have been a bad one. As far as I know, no-one has reported any design faults with the X60 Clevo chassis so you're onto a winner. Search the forums and you'll find the few issues that do arise seem to be with the occassional individual machine rather than a series problem. Unlike our X80s and X90s which don't like headphones being plugged into them !

JD - thanks for the kind words. Give it 12 months and I will know nothing - I spent months researching the laptop market before I bought the X90 as it was such a large investment and I knew nothing about it myself. In fact, I think I could reel off the spec., performance and reputation of every mid to high-end laptop currently on the market from memory ! I'm sad like that, you see :D

Cheers