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As we can only talk about the machines we have actually tested it does limit us a little to the wide range that Dell offer.  But here are our Top 3!

1. Studio 15 – This may not be a high end laptop, but not everyone can afford a Precision or XPS Studio!  The Studio 15 starts at around £399 and comes with the options to be a very  powerful or gaming laptop.  Intel Core Duo 2 Processors, up to 4GB Memory, Running Windows Vista, Graphics Card from 128MB!  Perfect for the average home gamer!  These laptops are stylish and well built and best of all great value for money!  Can’t be bad!
2. Latitude E5500 – Starting at around £530 this isn’t a cheap business laptop, but neither is it a really expensive one with some great like back-lit keyboard, ambient light sensor as well as all the usual stuff this laptop has incredible battery life, one user in particular can’t believe how good it is.  If you are looking for a machine that will give you a long time running the machine away from a power source then the Latitude E5500 is a certain.  We haven’t reviewed the E5500 but here is our review of the E6500 which is a similar machine!
3. XPS M1330 – This neat little laptop is brilliant, although no cheap.  For anyone who wants a lightweight, small notebook this should definitely be considered.  With options for high memory and a decent graphics card it is really a showy off laptop!  Read our Dell XPS M1330 Reviews:

• Dell XPS M1330 – Long Term Test

• Dell XPS M1330 Crimson Red Laptop Review

Over the past 12 days we’ve recommended 12 different retailers to you for Christmas present ideas.  As we are at the end of it all we thought it would be a good idea for us to do a quick review of who the 12 retailers were.

1. Apple
2. 123-Reg
3. Dell
4. Amazon
5. AVG
6. Misco
7. CD WOW
8. Dabs
9. HMV
10. PC World
11. The Carphone Warehouse
12. I Want One Of Those

Which retailers have you used?  Who is your favourite retailer?

One the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me a brand new Dell Computer!  Sounds pretty nice eh!  We are a big fan of dell as they provide very good quality machines at reasonable prices!  They are bound to have some great deals going on around the festive period!

Want to read review before you buy?  Check out the Dell Machine Reviews on the Brandstar Website!

If you have read any of the blog posts over at brandstar.co.uk you will find that I often rave about the Dell XPS Notebook range, and they really are great machines. However yesterday I got my first play with the new Dell Vostro 1510. Ultimately (well in my opinion) Dell have combined the Vostro 1500 and the XPS 1530 and produced a very nice machine!

Compared to the older Vostro 1500 it is smaller, lighter and thinner. The matt finish of the laptop lid has gone and is now a glossy, almost sparkly finish. Dell have taken the multimedia button idea from the XPS and put buttons above the keyboard on the 1510.

The slot loading CD drive helps the laptop be thinner than its older brother too and the model I saw had an inbuilt web cam much like my xps 1330.

I said when I got my XPS that I would never go back to the Vostro range, but now I am not so sure that is true! What’s more the Vostro is cheaper than the XPS! Well worth a look if you want a portable laptop and a good price

They’re my first thoughts on the Vostro 1510.

Ok, so not everyone has Microsoft Office 2007 yet, but it is rapidly becoming a popular Office Suite. So the Quick Tip this week is for those who have taken the plunge! Office 2007 will allow you to save documents as a PDF file, so rather than spending out on a PDF writer or even rather than using a freebie you can use an in-built function.

Not sure why, but Microsoft in their infinite wisdom haven’t included it as standard so you need to download it from the Microsoft Site for free. Then run the download and you’re away! Quick and Easy

With the release of the great new Microsoft Office 2007 package we thought that we would let you know of some of the cool new features!

Why the extra ‘x’?

For years documents on Office programs have been saved as in the same format e.g. Word’s format used to be .doc and Excel’s format used to be .xls. However, Microsoft have decided that now is the time for big change! All Office 2007 documents will be saved with an ‘x’ on the end, for example, Word is now .docx and Excel is not .xlsx. Why the extra ‘x’ I hear you say? Well basically the ‘x’ stands for a technology called XML which now helps run all office documents. The main differences between the two are that having the ‘xml’ technology makes the document smaller so that your software can handle with them faster, and also all of the Office 2007 software will ‘speak’ to each other so the software is more efficient. The documents are also more robust so are therefore less susceptible to becoming corrupted etc.

PDF and XPS

In the past if you emailed a document to somebody and they didn’t have the same version of Microsoft Office as you they wouldn’t be able to open the document without a compatibility software from a third-party company, which could potentially have cost hundreds of pounds! However, now Microsoft Office 2007 have provided a free download so that you can save your documents in .pdf format without having to use any thrid-party software. PDF is a format developed by Adobe, they offer a free reader to open files. PDF is ‘Portable Document Format’, this means that it can be opened on many types of computers or operating systems, e.g. different versions of Windows and Apple Mac’s. XPS stands for ‘XML Paper Specification’, and it is very similar to .pdf however it isn’t used quite as much over the world as it hasn’t been as round for as long. To download the software which allows you to save your documents in Office 2007 as ‘.pdf and .xps’ click here.

Blogging from Word

Word 2003 could produce simple codes for websites but not as detailed as you would expect from a specialised web layout tool. If you were to cut and paste the text from Word to your blogging tool you would have to ensure that the text format had been converted, as if it hadn’t been converted the post would be messed up! Therefore it was very stressful and not always worthwhile. However, now Microsoft Office Word 2007 has been given a dedicated blogging mode. Which can hook directly to a number of popular blogging tools, such as; WordPress, Blogger and MSN Spaces. Therefore it is even simpler to get yourself on the Internet! A huge majority of Blogs talk with both Microsoft Word 07 and Microsoft OneNote 07.

Fluent Ribbon

On Office 2003 it was often hard or long winded to find the feature you wanted as they seemed almost hidden within the ridiculous amounts of menus. Therefore we just assumed they weren’t there, when they most likely were, just in a less obvious place. However, the Office 2007 system has a new fluent interface! It is used for most of the applications in the suite and splits up the commands on offer to an easy to used structure and obvious grouping. Its a great time saver and your guaranteed to find some features that you ever knew existed!

For more on the new Microsoft Office Suite keep an eye out over the coming weeks