PC makeover with Best Buy $1,199.99
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16 out of 19 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Diminutive form-factor with a great thermal design and a big keyboard clad in ugly shades of grey"
Pros: Fanless, affordable, big keyboard, Korean engineering, being taken serious by business people
Cons: The lack of an express-card slot might hurt some users sometime in the future, Dull colors (why not black?), Dell's a dull (sorry), conservative, boring brand
Summary: I need a laptop for the library where I like it to be quiet. For many years, I was a convinced IBM Thinkpad user - then, when I read about the Q30's design, I wished I could afford to switch to Samsung (being located in Germany means that dealers ask for $5200 for this miracle of Korean engineering).
When I was thinking about a fanless system, the fan in my T42 suddenly began to sound awfully loud.
Then Dell brought out their version of the Q30 (one year ago, they did the same thing with the Q25, so there's no need to become hysteric) and I ordered one without having to get a second job cause it'll cost me a mere 2000 bucks.
Please note, people: the small 1,8" harddisk, the external second spindle and the slow cpu are all concessions the engineers had to make for a thermal design that works without moving parts! If you don't understand that, no wonder many of your complaints are misplaced.
The second great thing about this notebook is the almost normal size of the keyboard - in a small and incredibly lightweight form-factor.
Since I don't care much about colors or fanciness of a brand (contrary to "vladinecko", I am not interested in making love to an item), I have only one small complaint: There is no express-card slot, which might be a problem as soon as hdtv-dv or other data-intensive technologies become more important. But then again, I'll be using my desktop for that stuff anyway.
Since it seems to be inportant for many, one more word about the difference of the outward design between the Q30 and the X1: Dell markets their notebook as a business item. Samsung, by contrast, targets fashion victims with rich daddies (at least in my country).
Dell knows that buyers of the X1 are boring, calculating business guys clad in grey. For this group, the colors of an item can't be boring enough. I'll put a red sticker over the Dell logo on mine as soon as it arrives -my mom told me red and grey make a great contrast
