XPS comes to in end?

Nobody knows, anything at this point is pure speculation. The business systems have been updated with the new processors, so there's no doubt the consumer systems aren't far behind for a refresh.

Well the lay of the land seems to look like this:

There will be a flow of updated machines using Centrino 2, while they work to clean out old models.

There "may" have been a problem with the 9800m's such that Dell didn't upgrade the 1730 to that. That's rumour but it would fit with Dell's position.

There may be a Centrino 2 with a 9800m SLI coming. Intel said SLI was "coming" for Centrino 2 back in August at the IDF, so it will get there.

There are new mobile chips coming from Nvidia (and probably ATI at the same time or a few months after). The Nvidia codename for this is N10x mobile and look to be 40nm chips designed for mobile use that are basically off the most recent 200 series generation.

I don't "think" Dell will wait till Spring to refresh the 1730, but you never know. It's got to be cheap for them to produce the 1730 at this point in it's lifetime. But if they don't wait you will see a Centrino 2 model with 9800M's in it, but whether they will be 9800M GTX's or M GT's is an area of speculation.

I'm not certain but I think Centrino 2 offers a PCI-E ver 2.0 connection to the GPU, which would allow a much higher bandwidth than current models. As to whether that will actually produce any tangible benefit, because mobile chips aren't the biggest bandwidth hogs ever, is uncertain.

$.00001

To be honest I think that's the reason we haven't seen a refresh of the 1730 line. When I priced out a 1730 a couple of weeks ago I was talking with an online Dell rep about the feasibility of an LED backlit model and our conversation drifted to the 9800m GTX and he was trying to convince me I wouldn't see much, if any, improvement over the 8800m GTX SLI that the 1730 came with.

I pretty much agreed with him but defaulted to my standard line: No LED Backlight.. no sale.

First off the 8800M SLI doesn't exactly "suck". hehe But I suppose folks can be expecting more for their money with that being rather old in power compared to modern desktop gpu's.

I agree, next model will have to have LED backlit screen as an option at least, because some of us won't bite without one. As for a new mobile chip we'll have to look over at the NV and ATI camp and ask what they are doing for this "more than 50% of pc sales" market to liven things up.

I don't really mind either way, as long as my "Complete Care" and "XPS Support" still work and they don't try to give me some lower line laptop when I forked out the $$$ for a top-of-the-line XPS. (Meaning if XPS died and Alienware took over, my warranty better transfer over to the top Alienware laptops and not just die out)

actualy I think the precision line is a great alternative

the M6300/6400 is on par with the M1730 and I think it looks better
and the M6400 has the LED screen option.

A friend of mine tested a new 16'' XPS (he is a dell employee and this happened in a dell show room), so the dell will don't stop with the XPS line.

It was a 16" xps. :-)

What's your first language? Your English is pretty good, if not for a couple mistakes I wouldn't have known it wasn't your first .

It's odd that Dell would make something like a 16" XPS though, as (to my knowledge) all I've heard of is 15" and 17", it's interesting that they would make a hybrid like that.

Personally I don't care much about the size of the laptop, I just want it to perform well and not be made cheaply.

:-p

16 and 18 inch laptops will be norm in newer generations. This allows true 16x9 rather than the 16x10 most laptops enjoy today. so the 16=14.1 and 18.2=17

Makes sense when put like that, never understood why they didn't follow standard HD ratios.

I really see no problem with 16:10. I don't care if I get bigger black bars at the top and bottom when I play movies. 18" is too big (cosmetically) and 16" is probably too small (functionally).

true. What I read was that the screen manufacturers were getting tired of making 3 different aspect ratios. So they are going down to one.
4x3-16x10-16x9
to
16x9

That's for sure. It looks better, is faster, docks, and holds more RAM (with 4 channels to the ram and 4 SODIMM sockets). If it offered SLI 8800/9800 well then it'd be a done deal, but it doesn't. Crummy sound chip too, but that's a lesser issue.

Really sad that the XPS's stopped docking after the 1710.

Wow, that M6400 Covet is really nice. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before. It has almost everything I've been looking for in a laptop. But with no BluRay drive, HDMI port and a $4700 configuration price, I just can't bring myself to hit the purchase button.

*sigh*

I don't think I'll ever find a laptop I'm happy with again! lol

I think you can get a displayport to HDMI adapter for the M6400, however Dell doesn't pass audio through their displayports (in fact, audio is optional with Displayport for any vendor) Also, the Dport plus port replicator has HDMI output last I remember.