Polar bears found in the North, not in the South.

Penguins found in the South, not in the North.

North is Arctic, where I’ve been in the Arctic circle before.

South is Antarctic, I’ve never been before, not even close.

The impersonation of Palin is so accurate!

My dell laptop cover has been scratched by the power plug when placed in my bag. ARGH. Deep scratch!!!

Cost of procrastinating. I intended to get the laptop sleeve this weekend, but it turned out the very thing I’m trying to avoid has happened.

Finally got my ass off the chair, to the mall and get myself a 14 inch Zeroshock 3 laptop sleeve. Damaged done though, can’t complain. Maybe I’ll give Dell a call, to fix it if they don’t classify it as negligence… Quite hard to be honest.

Wireless speed reached gigabit faster than I thot. I just laid my whole house with Cat6, bah.

Top view with the cordless mouse. This is my old cordless mouse, the freebie is a Logitech V450 laser cordless (not pictured). Note the big red usb stick, it’s the receiver for the mouse. The new freebie mouse comes with a much smaller usb receiver. Love the red and black constrast.

The blue LED lights on the exterior showing the ac power adapter, On/Off LED and Battery LED. That thick thing is the Displayport to DVI adapter plugged into my external 19 inch LCD monitor for dual display.

Also seen is the 9 cell battery protruding out from the back, giving me about 4.5 hours battery life on average with half brightness and wireless on. I also tested 5 hours of batt life with 70% brightness, constant use (Net surfing, downloading, installing of softwares), wireless off, running on Gigabit Ethernet instead and dual display output.

The SD card slot is in front, in a bad position, very hard to take out.

I had trouble logging to msn just now, and after I finally got in, another netsplit. ARGH Freaking hell.

And Gmail had an extended outage awhile ago though I wasn’t affected, but apparently businesses which relied on it did. Good idea to back up my Gmail now.

Finally after waiting for so many weeks!!! almost a month. My new laptop is delivered!!!

First impression: good battery life with the 9 cell I ordered.

Seriously, that’s important as I sat through hours of lectures using it without cursing the school for not installing more power sockets. Portability defines laptop. The backlit keyboard is so so, I don’t really find a use for it yet.

One good thing I’ve noticed which I thought should be built into all laptops by default: The ability to disable battery charging when plugged in. As I’m cycling the battery now, this is a feature which can potentially lengthen my battery lifespan without the hassle of me taking the battery out and putting it to one side when I plug in the power adapter. I know some Thinkpad users will say: that feature is there in Thinkpads for god knows how long, but ya, nice to have. A must for all laptops.

The list goes on:

• LED backlit for the Display (higher res @1440×900)
• eSata
• 1 USB PowerShare port for charging usb devices with the laptop off
• Displayport to output to DVI/HDMI
• Gigabit Ethernet (that’s pretty standard but I realised some are still on 10/100)
• 3×3 antenna wireless N card (I just use WiFi G at the moment)
• 2GB ram (should have gotten default 1GB and buy the upgrade myself)
• P8400 Intel processor - the P series which saves more power than T series
• Ambient Light Sensor (not useful, disabled it)
• Free fall sensor harddisk (not sure if it’s useful, but nice to have)
• Onsite warranty (Dell has no service centre in Singapore, all onsite warranty anyway)

Installed 64 bit vista business to try out 64 bit OS. So far so good, no major problems, just some 32 bit apps cannot integrate into Shell, such as Winrar. Trying to sort out Dell’s utilities and drivers, playing with the options and knowing more about this laptop.

I highly recommend this business laptop if you are sick and tired of the ridiculous lock down of options and lower quality build in consumer grade laptops. And a side note, if you are buying from Dell, look for a salesperson at their Funan or Suntec store instead of ordering online. I personally prefer Suntec. You can get the same cash rebate or promotion offer as the online purchase plus more freebies if you can really bargain. Another reason is, you can have more customizations not present in the online page. When I ordered this laptop, the LED display and backlit option was not shown online though I vividly remember they provide such options.

It’s finally shipped from the factory. Almost here…