The old mid-range Inspiron 15 something laptop groaned and wheezed its way to quiet retirement. Not too shabby, after 8+ years of service with two users (my brother and then me).  

The new laptop- an Inspiron 15 5510- has been christened the TARDIS. She's definitely my TARDIS.

Things I'm loving so far-

1. The battery. The battery. Oh, the wonderful battery! that lasts 7+ 11+ hours after being used to 2 hour-batteries (if that!) since 2008! I'm now able to legitimately fantasize about walking into any (any!) cafe that catches my eye without the usual 'Excuse me, do you have plug points?' Is it the 11th gen Intel chipsets? Is it Dell deciding to be nicer to its mid-range computers? Who knows? Who cares? :D This is by far my most favourite part of the new machine.

2. The weight. I can lift it with ease in one hand! After being used to having to use two, since 2008. (I have terrible arm strength/upper body strength, so this actually means something :P) All brands appear to be very invested in making slimmer and slimmer laptops these days, across all ranges. Again, I don't know why (lighter is good, ofcourse, but should slimness have this much emphasis?), but I question not.

3. The camera shutter. Inevitable on all post-pandemic, post-video meeting gaffes machines, and a most valuable design addition.

4. Being forced into some essential good habits-a) immediate cloud back-up of all files, from now until perpetuity, b) switching to Opera browser with its free VPN after an entire adulthood spent with Mozilla Firefox. When you have a stupid tendency towards loyalty to inanimate objects that don't give a damn, you need drastic changes/shifts to move to new systems. I've no idea if the Opera VPN is any good, but hey, Firefox has none (and apparently eats more memory anyway)!

5.  The SSD experience (in conjunction with the chipset?). Nothing has ever loaded as fast in my life, and that too on just a core i3.

6. The heat management. The two rows of almost edge-to-edge vents on the bottom and the slight incline the keyboard is always at (freeing up another row of vents) means this system never really heats up, even when I have a thousand tabs open on two separate browsers. This feels like quite the luxury!


Things I'm decidedly not loving-

1. THE KEYBOARD. With the slimmer bodies are coming stupidass keyboards. I'm always thinking back longingly of the keyboards on the earlier generation of laptops circa 2008-specifically, the Inspiron 1525. Whose decision was it to go the chiclet keyboard way? And whose decision was it after that to go for even 'flatter' keys with every consequent iteration/model of laptops? (I mean, I can type on it, but it is not a pleasureable experience!)

2. Single button touchpads. I'm loving the gestures and responsiveness of the tracking thingie, but I'd any day prefer a two button left and right click, separated from the trackpad.

3. Dell's missing quality control (received a brand new laptop with a severely and obviously faulty trackpad) and surprisingly bad aftersales (painful hours on the phone, 2 week delay from their end in sending replacement parts, inability to give me exact timelines, and no transparency in their escalation.) The bad aftersales now appears to be a universal feedback across countries, going by forum posts. All my machines have been Dell primarily for the after sales-my earlier experiences had been really good. I understand after-sales is terrible for most companies, but if Dell isn't going to be any different, then I'm going to go scouting other brands next time. Acer appears to be a good competitor, price and spec wise.