The time has come. I ordered the Vostro V1700 yesterday, and it has the honour to be my first personal laptop. I spent an hour on the phone with Dell to complete my order but now I'm sure I made the best choice from the list of options and budgets. For a second during the call I was tempted to consider the luxurious, XPS range but it was way out of my budget. The upgrades from the original spec were the battery from 6-cell to 9-cell (give you an extra 2hrs) and the graphics card to the 8600 GT. I downgraded the support from 3-years to 1-year.

The only problem with this is that I've got to wait for a maxium of 4 weeks for the delivery because there is a shortage of parts in most of Europe. At least I'm on holiday for 2 of the 4 weeks so it's not such a big deal.