My new laptop: ASUS Lamborghini VX2s

I'm doing quite a bit of development from home at the moment, and using my old laptop with its single core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB RAM just wasn't productive as I spent more time waiting for Windows to page memory from the swapfile than I did actually working. Of course, it doesn't help that it was running Vista Ultimate which consumes the best part of 1GB of RAM without even having any applications open. So I decided to go shopping for a new laptop with the following requirements, in roughly this order of importance:

• 15" high resolution screen - My old laptop had a 17" screen running at 1920x1400 pixels which gives a lot of space, but it made the laptop too bulky and heavy to actually take anywhere. As I often tended to work with applications not quite full screen (most aren't optimised for a resolution that high so it isn't as useful as you might think) I decided a 15" screen with a resolution of around 1600x1000 would be the best compromise between resolution, readability and portability.
• 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor - Although I'm planning on staying with 32-bit Windows on the laptop for a while (as my experiences with 64-bit Windows on my media center show it's still a bit painful to try and run that) I wanted the ability to upgrade to 64-bit in the future. The Core 2 Duo processors are supposed to be the best for mobile use at the moment, and I fancied one of the latest Santa Rosa chips.
• 150GB+ 7200rpm hard disk - Whatever hard disk size seems reasonable now always seems too small in a couple of years time so it makes sense to go for one of the largest available, which meant no less than 150GB. The 7200rpm rotation speed is critical to the overall performance of the laptop as the disk is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the system; once you see the difference 7200rpm makes compared to 5400rpm you'll never consider a slow disk again.
• 4GB RAM - 1GB just isn't enough to run Vista and Visual Studio, with Outlook etc. in the background, and while 2GB RAM would suffice 4GB would be even better. Of course, while on a 32-bit operating system it's unlikely that I'd be able to access much more than 3GB of it, but at least it would be there for the future.

As you can see my requirements are high end, but aren't too specific apart from the important things: Great screen, fast processor, fast hard disk, lots of RAM. However, after searching round all of the major manufacturers sites I could only find two laptops that even met the first one! Almost every single 15" screen laptop on the marked has a resolution around 1300x800 or less. As such, the choice was immediately narrowed down to a heavily configured Dell Inspiron or the ASUS Lamborghini VX2s.

After spending a bit of time on Dell's configuration wizard I could spec it exactly as required for about £1500 including VAT which seemed like a great deal given that even six months ago the RAM upgrade from 2GB to 4GB would have cost nearly that much. There were just two problems:

1. There is a five week waiting time for the fast Dell Inspirons. I needed the laptop much sooner than that as blinkBox goes live in a couple of weeks so I'm working a lot at the moment.
2. It's a Dell, which itself brings two problems. Firstly, Dells break. Every single one I have ever owner has blown up its motherboard within the first year, and suffered from build quality problems such as random mouse movements, creaks, etc. Secondly it's mundane; the laptop equivalent of a Mondeo. And nobody really wants to buy a Mondeo, no matter how good they are.

Which just left the ASUS Lamborghini VX2s. 15.4" 1680x1080 pixel screen, 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa processor with 800MHz FSB, 200GB 7200rpm hard disk, 2GB RAM (1GB Turbo) and a Blu-Ray rewriter drive. OK, the RAM isn't quite as much as I wanted, but I'll swap that extra 2GB for a Blu-Ray drive any day of the week. It's also got a whole bunch of unusual and useful connectors like 1Gb Ethernet support, FireWire port, HDMI output, and a digital audio output.

The thing that seals the deal though is that it looks really sexy - piano lacquer pearlescent yellow finish, stitched leather palm rests, chromed control keys; as the name suggests it's more the laptop equivalent of a Lamborghini than a Mondeo. Retail price is around £2200 but Laptops Direct are selling them for £1699 which is a bargain; though you'll have to be fast if you want one as only 200 of these laptops were made by ASUS and they have only got 5 left at the time of writing.

The out-of-box experience

When the laptop arrived the next day, it was in a very large heavy box. Opening this revealed quite a lot more than I was expecting. First of all I pulled out a beautifully tailored Lamborghini branded laptop bag, which you could never actually use because it basically screams "steal me!" but very nice nonetheless.

The next thing was a large and solid presentation box with a Lamborghini logo on top. Opening this revealed yet another layer of packaging in the form of a velvet bag. Opening that finally revealed the laptop in all its yellow glory. At this point about half the people in the office were standing around, and there was a roughly equal mixture of "Urrrgh that's hideous" and "Wow that's cool" reactions. Fortunately mine was in the latter camp, though having spent a small fortune on the thing I'm pre-conditioned to like it.

Digging around in the box revealed a whole load more things I wasn't expecting, such as a laptop-sized carrying pouch to protect it in transit, a Bluetooth mouse, a leather mouse mat, and even a mini velvet mouse bag. All Lamborghini branded, of course. I have to hand it to ASUS, they really know how to package a product so you feel like you've bought something special. It was a little different to unpacking a usual laptop in its polystyrene holders.

The usage experience

Turning the laptop on, the first thing you notice is that the usual boot screen has been replaced with a Lamborghini logo, and the computer makes a "Vroom Vroom" sound. Tacky, yes, but entertaining and not too over the top. It took me an hour or so to delete most of the crap preloaded software, and then another few hours to install all of the usual software such as Office, SQL Server, Visual Studio, and all the other developer tools. Finally another few hours worth of a full virus scan, spyware scan, disk defragmentation, and CHKDSK and it was ready to go.

The good new it that it's fast. Very fast. I barely notice the difference between working on the laptop and on my usual work desktop. The screen looks beautiful with its reflective surface (which is probably bad in the sun but I don't care because I'm a developer so I never go outside) and the high resolution. All the laptop functions such as sleep, wireless and Bluetooth can be controlled using the row of chromed control keys at the top. And the leather palm rests feel really nice - much more so than shiny plastic.

There are a couple of minor annoyances though. Firstly the FN and CTRL keys are swapped over so FN is outside CTRL, which means that I keep hitting FN and changing the screen gamma correction (FN+C) instead of copying things (CTRL+C). I'm just about starting to get used to it now, but even so it's irritating. The other thing is that the fan exhaust is on the right hand side of the case, which means all the heat is pumped out right into the space where I'd usually put the mouse, but can't as it's too hot.

Overall I think it's a great piece of kit and I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a high-end laptop.