New Notebook, Part 1

When I first found out that I could get a new notebook at work, I thought it was a blessing. Silly, silly me.

Due to the way the budget is set up, I had to order the notebook before the end of June or the money would just disappear into some accounting black hole. Not a problem, I thought. I'd always been a fan of Dells, surely they'd have an updated version of my current Inspiron 9400 I could get. After all, I'd fairly simple requirements:

1. 17" screen that supported 1920x1200 resolution (this is my primary work machine)
2. some kind of digital video output (i.e. HDMI or DVI)
3. The control key must come before the function key on the bottom left of the keyboard (because by now my typing is pretty much accomplished through muscle memory)

After much research, I realized that I had very few choices. #1 rules out most notebooks. Dell, in their infinite wisdom, decided to remove the DVI outputs on their 17" Inspirons, so those were out, and their XPS's are just ridiculously heavy. Lenovo and Gateway notebooks all break rule #3. The only thing I could find that met all my requirements was something from HP's business line.

Unfortunately, at almost twice the price of anything else, the HP notebook wasn't quite going to fit into the budget unless I cut out on more options that I really wanted to. A few days before the deadline though, Dell announced their new Studio line, which pretty much gave me everything I wanted in a slightly lighter package to boot. Problem solved! Or so I thought...