Dell Vostro 2520 Laptop (Core i5 3rd Gen/4 GB/500 GB/Linux)

Buying Price: Rs. 33,000 (with Cash on Delivery) Received: Dell Vostro 2520 Laptop, Dell Recommended Backpack & Philips HP8100 1000 W Hair Dryer (Blue) as a freebie. Delivery & Customer Support ????? Was Delivered within 4 days DESPITE that I ordered it on Sunday afternoon. So it's just within 3 working days. Items received ????? Along with the laptop, I also received a free backpack & Philips HP8100 1000 W Hair Dryer (Blue) which is selling for Rs.700 here on Flipkart. The freebies alone are worth more than Rs.1000 Contents ????? The laptop came with a charger but did NOT include a Driver CD, which almost all include with a laptop. Although I was aware of this BEFORE buying, so couldn't complain about that. BUT if you are not tech-savvy, then you might face some difficulties formatting & installing the Operating System. Looks ????? It is an eye-sore to look at! The image displayed is taken at an angle, that makes it look less ugly than it actually is! The lid's back is coated with a ribbed, rubber layer that protects the back from bumps & scratches & has horizontal lines & is more of a black (very dark shade of gray) than the advertized 'gray'. Looks thick & not very aesthetically pleasing. Although definitely NOT the most ugly thing, as I have seen far worse than this. There is NO number pad to the right & the keys are NOT back-lit. Configuration ????? For the price, this is THE BEST you can get. For the same configuration, others charge almost 20-50% more than this. ? CPU ????? The Core i5 (3rd Gen) 3230M is a very competent processor. Not only it is a third generation, but is also clocked at 3.2GHz Turbo frequency with 2 physical cores with hyperthreading, giving you a 4 cores parallel processing. Most people only consider Core i3, i5 or i7 but do NOT take into consideration the frequency (or speed) of the processor. At 3.2 GHz, it is a cream of the crop. It is capable of running any CPU intensive job at a very respectable celerity. ? Graphics ????? The integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 offers DirectX 11, with 16 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at 650 MHz up to 1150 MHz with Turbo Boost, making it one of the faster variants. If you are a gamer, then this proficient GPU along with the more than adequate CPU, you should be able to run most of the games, even the newer ones by toning the graphic details. I was able to run Crysis 2 pretty smooth. ? RAM ????? It's 4GBs of RAM is more than most laptops 2GBs. You shouldn't be running out of memory even after disabling Virtual RAM (swapfile) Display ????? 15.6-inch LED backlit screen with a native resolution of 1366x768 pixels. It's screen is covered with a matte surface which reduces glare & also reduces finger prints on the surface. The average brightness of 237.8 cd/m² is within a good range. The screen's brightness is easily enough for outdoor use. Its matte surface also makes things easier. Connectivity ????? The only thing it misses is a USB 3.0 port. It has everything else. 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 VGA, 1 HDMI, headphone in, microphone out, Card Reader, DVD Writer (many laptops don't come with a DVD writer, only DVD player), Gigabit-LAN, Bluetooth & WiFi. If you have a USB 3.0 external Hard Disk or Pen Drive, then you'd be sacrificing a lot of speed. It will still work, but at USB 2.0 speeds. Battery Life ????? Despite it says that it's battery lasts for upto 3 hours, I regularly get near to 6 hours of juice out of it. Although I only run MS Office & nothing else in background with brightness turned pretty down , but it is still far more than the other laptops I've dealt with. Even watching movies gives me more than the advertized 3 hours of battery! Other Thoughts: Since it comes with Ubuntu, most of your Windows softwares won't work on it. A few can work with wine under ubuntu. Plus the User Interface (UI) is different which can be very irritating if you haven't used anything except windows. Lack of Windows Apps along with a different UI might make things difficult for you. I formatted & installed Windows 8.1 on it. Since it doesn't come with a driver CD, you'd have to manually download the drivers from Dell's website. The website is user friendly, but it is still a chore to manually do it! I have also disabled a lot of unnecessary services from MSCONFIG & thus it uses less CPU, RAM & gives more battery life. This along with the dimming of screen brightness & disabling pagefile (virtual RAM) gives me more than enough, infact twice of the advertized battery life. Final Verdict ????? This is an absolute value for money, given the configuration, speed & battery life. Unless you want an aesthetically pleasing laptop or move a lot of data to & from external hard disk via USB 3.0 port, there is absolutely NO reason to NOT buy it.

Excellent laptop. A little on the heavy side. But feels very sturdy especially with the rugged plastic cladding on the top cover. This cladding also prevents the top cover from getting scratches which I highly appreciate about this laptop. Performance wise, I found it extremely fast and stable, battery backup is good, the keyboard feels very responsive though a bit noisy while typing, ample wrist space, multi-touch track pad is very good and responsive, Non reflective screen is good for the price. A few cons - No backlit keyboard. No power button light. The indicator LEDs are on the forward edge of the laptop which makes them very difficult to see. No USB 3.0. A bit on the heavy side. And mind you, its LINUX (Ubuntu) not Windows. So if you are a windows user, you are not gonna like the Ubuntu OS. You need to buy Windows separately and install. I had a copy of Windows 7 which I installed and it works great on this laptop. About flipkart, the packing was excellent and delivery was very quick. Highly recommend both Flipkart and Vostro 2520 laptop.