I used to write a column called DRUM: Dubious Reviews of Unrelated Materials. You know, like how you'd compare two video cards' specs to see which was the better buy? Except instead of two of the same thing, it was two things I had no business comparing to one another. Like a plastic sport bottle, and a computer!
See below??
32-oz. Nalgene bottle vs. Dell Inspiron 560
I got both of these at around the same time, although I must admit to a bit of experience with the Nalgene before I pulled the trigger and bought myself the Dell. For all intents and purposes related to reviewing, though, limiting ourselves to the psychic context of their receipt, the products came to me in the same beat. Just beginning to feel I have the money to make commercial expressions, and looking to fill needs I didn't actually have before the money came.
So. Which was the better buy?
If we look at it just in terms of dependability and value for the money, there's no question: the bottle is miles ahead of the Dell. The Dell's CPU, vital to the performance of the machine, works in temperatures from 5 degrees to 74.1 degrees Celsius--basically, if water stops being a liquid, the Dell's going to be in trouble. The plastic the Nalgene is made of, on the other hand, runs from negative 40 degrees, where Fahrenheit and Celsius are magically the same temperature, to water's boiling point. You can brew coffee in the Nalgene; I'd feel uncomfortable putting my coffee too near the Dell.
Life expectancy, too, is a concern; the Dell was at the cheap end of the mid-range for these sorts of machines, and even the top of the line is going to be painfully obsolete in a few years. The Nalgene, on the other hand, almost can't become obsolete. The original line of bottles was introduced in the '70s, and I am a thousand percent certain that someone out there is still using one of the first production run. It's getting on to the point that there may be some heirloom water bottles trickling down through the generations. Assuming I don't run it over with a tractor or something, I'll be able to use this bottle long after the Dell is relegated to data storage.
There are lots of other places the Dell falls short. It's a faceless black rectangle, while the Nalgene is a pleasantly translucent blue cylinder andincludes graduated markings to let you know how much stuff's inside. The Nalgene comes in eight colors to the Dell's five, and it's dishwasher-safe, in the top rack. Sure, you can cram almost thirty times the volume into the Dell's case, but only when the functioning bits aren't in there, and then you lose a lot of the point of having a Dell in the first place. The Dell almost certainly had a bigger impact on the environment during its production than the Nalgene, and the Dell's carbon footprint only gets bigger as it's used. The Nalgene has no moving parts and requires no energy input whatever; its carbon footprint stays where it is. Good job, Nalgene.
However. Dependability and value aren't the only concerns when you're buying a computer, are they? After all, if that was all we wanted, we could just buy a huge chunk of rock and call it good. What I wanted from the Dell was exactly what I got; a clean, shiny box that plays my music and videos and makes games look great.
It makes everything look great, in fact, following the installation of a shiny new graphics card. That's where the Dell wins big points: sure, it won't last as long, and it doesn't hold up to the elements in any capacity, but it'll do what I want it to for as long as I need it to. And it's doing it very well indeed.
Graphics are astounding. Even the simple things are drastically improved over the laptop I bought in college, and for half the price. HD video looks fantastic, and I can--for the first time I can remember--put the graphics setting on my games to High without even a hiccup. The Dell could, if I let it, handle 7.1-channel audio; the best the Nalgene can offer me is a kind of woobly echo sound when I tip it up to take a drink. That's not even getting into the freebies that came with it. Best Buy gave me a year's warranty, six months of antivirus protection (although, since it's biologically inactive, the Nalgene is its own virus protection), and a free photo album, of all things. All Nalgene gave me was a twist-off plastic cap, and that because the bottle's mostly useless without one.
So. Dependability and value are off the table, and the shiny graphics and games are out. We're left with basic usability issues. You'd think this would be a clean sweep for the Nalgene; what's easier than a bottle? But anymore computers are ubiquitous enough that they're almost as easy to use. For my purposes, there are three major categories here: setup, day-to-day usage, and special circumstances.
Nalgene wins for setup. I didn't have to do anything; there was nothing for me to do. I had the bottle, and therefore it was set up. The Dell required unpacking, hooking up cables, installing a graphics card, setting up operating system profiles, registration, antivirus setup and registration, and some further optional setup I declined to perform because at that point I couldn't be bothered.
For day-to-day usage, Nalgene actually falls a little bit short: it's less complicated, but also less interesting. I use it to make cold-brew tea at work, and I like that it's big enough that I don't have to do so more than once a day. It's a very "set it and forget it" type of usage. The Dell is active and exciting and always changing. I can watch movies and shows, and frequently do, and if I ever get sick of any of the games I've got I can switch to another or, thanks to Steam, throw a few bucks out there and get something completely new. (Or, as suits my particular tastes, something completely old that I didn't have the hardware to experience when it was new.) The biggest point for Dell, though, is that I have never once spilled its contents on myself while I was using it. The same widemouth design that makes it possible to get my cold-brew tea bags in there also makes it extremely likely that the tea will end up on my shirt.
Finally, special circumstances. Specifically, the circumstance of being drunk. This is where the Nalgene and the Dell come out about even, and even get some synergy going. With its wide mouth and twist-on cap, the Nalgene is perfect for mixing and even shaking delicious imbibables to slip me into our special circumstances. Then the Dell takes over, letting my heightened idiocy take its full expression on our vast and anonymous Internet with its games and blogs and so on. Both products have there dangers here: drunk-Delling runs the risk of putting something ridiculous or embarrassing on the Internet for all to see, and the Nalgene will put as much of your drink on you as in you if you're not paying attention. But overall, the experience is pleasant enough to come back again and again, stumbling onto game after game of online combat, the other combatants made tolerable largely through the soft-focus lens an evening's tipple brings.
So. Overall. Dell's shinier and more fun, the Nalgene is more dependable. And less costly. I could buy forty to fifty of these and not match the money I spent on the Dell. But then, what am I going to do with fifty Nalgene bottles? At its heart, the Nalgene was a purchase of convenience; I was sick of buying Gatorade just because it came in a one-quart vessel I could make tea in. Besides which, after the fifth such purchase I'd've spent enough to buy a Nalgene anyway. And if I'm going for unnecessary trinkets to make my life a little easier, the Dell's miles ahead. There's so much crap to do crammed into that shiny, soulless black box that I'm hard-pressed to think of a reason to slink back into my cozy home office. Given the option, of course, I'll take both together, thank you much, but if I had to choose just one...well, there are a thousand other one-quart vessels out there, but only one shiny box that brings my TV to its full potential.
Yay Dell!
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