Dell Inspiron Duo - First Impressions

First impression? EXCELLENT!



Perhaps that isn’t detailed enough, ok well I may as well talk through the unbox video first. The Duo was delivered to me today after several hours of excitedly looking out of the window whenever I heard a car coming down the road. The box itself is perfectly serviceable, but who cares about that? It’s what’s inside we’re interested in.

Opening the box reveals the netbook wrapped in a thin foam bag padded with blocks on the side with the box at the side containing the power lead. With that stuff out of the way let’s have a look at the Duo itself.

For the most part the Duo has a lovely rubberised feel around the screen bezel and the main body, the back of the screen is glossy, patterned and is of course emblazoned with the Dell logo.

My first thought is that it looks better than it does in the various preview videos and reviews I’ve seen so far. On the underside we find a detachable flap under which are the Windows license stuff and a sim card reader which, if you have a 3G sim, will allow the Duo to access the 3G network.

The Duo has minimal ports on the body with 2 USBs and a headphone jack on the side hidden under 2 flaps with the power socket next to those. The tiny grill you can see to the right of the USB flaps is one of the speakers.

The port on the underside is for the JBL speaker dock which is sold separately and which I haven’t bought.

Opening the Duo up reveals a lovely chiclet style keyboard, which has a lovely solid feel to it and is very pleasant to type on, and the mouse tracker and mouse buttons which again are very nice to use.



Then we come to the main feature of the Duo, the screen, which displays 1366x768 meaning the Duo can display 720p HD video. It looks terrific, the much talked about issue with the screen visibility angle is unfounded in my opinion, it is as good as most others I have seen though not in the same league as Apples latest.





Having spent a little time playing with the Duo after it had booted and run through the first use setup I must say I am very happy, the touch screen is nice to use, flipping the screen is a great novelty which I will take some time to tire of and, once in tablet mode, the gestures and Dells own overlying software is serviceable, I have a slight problem with the idea that you can’t change the Icon functions or which programs they link to (I would rather my internet button opened Chrome rather than IE) but this is rumoured to be attended to in Dells first update to the software next year .At £480 it isnt’ cheap but for the “most powerful tablet in the world” it’s not bad at all, though really it’s not a tablet, but I still bloody love it.

Resurrection

Yay, I can still sign in despite not doing for months!

Having had most of my first week off for Christmas and having very little to do I've decided I'll write a few posts over hte next month or so, nothing major just a few little reviews and ramblings of things I've been up to.

hopefully I'll get through one more or fewer of these topics

-World of Warcraft: Cataclysm from the brand spanking new players point of view.

-Unboxing video, early impressions and later on a review of the Dell Inspiron Duo.

-Diary of my work in a competition for a Burnley company called AMS Neve.

-Roundup of the games I've been playing this year.

So I've given myself plenty to do. Hopefully some of it will happen.

Pokémon Heart Gold

With the release of Heart Gold and Soul Silver tomorrow, shiny new remakes of the best two games in the Pokémon series, I thought I’d run down a bit of the early game and have a little look at the new features that have been brought in.
For those of you who played Gold or Silver you’ll be well aware of the early proceedings of the game as these have changed very little however the look of the game is vastly different, the entire game has been given a Diamond/Pearl/Platinum style graphics overhaul with everything now rendered in 3D (not to be confused with what may be on the 3DS sometime in the future) and, with the implementation of a second screen the Pokégear has had a work over too.

A few weeks ago I got the chance to spend an hour or so with Heart Gold and, as a huge fan of the original Gold I jumped at it and found a few small differences that make a pleasant change to the start of the game, as per Gold you are tasked, by your friend Prof. Elm to go off into the wilderness to retrieve something from an old friend of his, creatively named “Mr Pokémon” and then bring it back, to help you do this you are given a choice of three Pokémon, Chikorita, Totodile or Cyindaquil and from there madness ensues...



I was always going to be buying this whether Nintendo changed anything or not but I’ve got to say I’m pleasantly surprised with the upgrade to my favourite Pokémon game of the series and I think its fair to say and Pokéfans of years past will be too but it’s also by far the best way of getting into the whole Pokémon phenomenon.