9 out of 10 times, after you get the quotation from the dell representative they also throw you a deal where they will sell it at that price inclusive of the tax. So that saves the 4% VAT in most places on the purchase.
I think Acer has the best value for money laptops and no one can beat them at it. Who else sells a Core Duo laptop with 8x dvd-writer, 14" Widescreen LCD, 512MB RAM, 120GB hdd for 36k?
I agree with Aberforth that the current HP pricing are off the mark slightly especially their core 2 duo range. Mostly they have the OEM processors with 533Mhz FSB in mainstream laptops. I think its time for them to offer full notebook customization for Indian customers like they have on US site. That would be something really nice to look forward to. Due to the HP pricings, it makes more sense getting a Core 2 Duo notebook from Dell. But their lower end compaq do have some nice turion mk-36 and turion x2 based notebooks for a 40-45k budget with ati/nvidia onboard graphics enough to run vista in its full glory.
On Dell India site, it is very important to select the right stock config from the catalog. Not all Dell Inspiron 6400 base configs have the same deal as the 50k one with 1GB RAM, DVD Writer, Bluetooth module with T5500 Core 2 Duo Processor and the rest of the regulars. Getting the X1400 ATI graphics chip makes sense coz it costs just around 3.5k more. Also make sure you get a 9-celled battery for Inspiron 6400. To give you a rough indication, 6 celled battery on X1400 gives a 140 minutes battery backup on moderate loads whereas the 9-celled one gives nearly 1.5 times of that.
For pics, you can check notebookreview.com, notebookforums.com and notebookcheck.net! You will find every darn notebook known to man in the past 5 years and a truck load of pics.
