My household already has 4 laptops in daily use by all 4 family members. Why do I need another you may well ask? Well I am putting the oldest of the quartet (Advent 5490 Celeron 900MHz ) out to semi-retirement with my 80 year-old parents who want to join the 21st century and become silver surfers. This means we need a new laptop and guess what - I will get the new PC! Oh yes.
We have 3 other laptops:
My (now my wife’s) is a Toshiba 5200-902 Pentium 2.4GHz 512M RAM
My 16 year-old son has a Tiny MK64-3200 Mediabook P4 3.2GHz
My 13 year-old son has an Amilo A1630 P4 3.7GHz
These are all networked via a Netgear 802.11g wifi router.
As a matter of interest all 4 PCs have worked faultlessly, yes, even the Tiny, but I do keep them clean with AShampoo Optimizer, UltraWincleaner, AdAware, Antivir and regular defragging.
I’m an avid gamer (I know – sad at 60) and having researched the available hardware in Feb/early March this year I got it narrowed down to a short list of 1 - the Rock Extreme XTi 3.6 which received rave reviews (e.g. PCPro April 05). My only real reservations were the battery life (< 1 hour), Clevo chassis (heat, weight >12 lbs) and cost (c.£2.3k).
Just before I parted with the money I spotted early reviews from US purchasers of the XPS2 on http://notebookforums.com/. The reported performance figures knocked the Rock for six. 3DMark05 – around 5000! Battery life in excess of 2 hours. Weight 8.5 lbs. The downsides were no X-Black screen and it’s a Dell (THE DARK SIDE)!
On release in the UK (mid March05) the price fitted too – for my configuration <£2.2k with 3 years NBD support as per the Rock.
So I resisted valiantly for a few weeks still sitting on the fence but the reports seemed very favourable and my drool factor was up so high reading more reviews on http://notebookforums.com/ that I had to have it and ordered it on 28th April 2005. It arrived from Ireland unannounced, despite Dell’s assurances of 2 days notice, 3 working days later. Nice to get it so quickly but it was pure chance I was in on that day.
SPECIFICATION:
Pentium M770 2.13GHz
17” Ultrasharp Widescreen WUXGA (1920x1200)
1024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM
80GB (5400rpm) HDD
8xDVD+/-RW Drive
Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 Ultra with 256MB DDR
802.11g LAN card, Gigabit LAN NIC, 56k modem
Optical mouse
Li-ion battery + 1 spare
3yr NBD on-site support
Price - £2176
OPENING THE BOX!
I have purchased 12 PCs for personal use since 1983 and have never lost the thrill of this moment. It’s like being a kid at Christmas. Told you I was sad.
Out of the box, the XPS2 had thick plastic sheets covering the aluminum LCD cover and the area below the keyboard. The LCD cover had another skin-tight polythene protector sheet that is very hard to detect. Plus foam padding sheets covering the keyboard.
Included in my box:
The laptop
A video break-out-box with S-video, composite and digital audio
Spare battery (negotiated as part of the deal)
Windows XP Home SP2 CD
Dell Drivers and Utilities CD
Cyberlink PowerDVD CD
Sonic MyDVD and RecordNow CDs
MS Works 7.0 CD
Power Unit
Modem lead with BT adaptor
Dell optical mouse
Owner’s manual and startup poster
FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND FIRING UP FIRST TIME
The XPS 2 has a black border around silver casing that is very stylish and a silver polished lid. The lid has a ‘armour’ effect but is actually a smooth glossy polished aluminum type of surface that in the flesh looks great.
Plug in and there are lots of coloured LEDs. The LEDs are situated in the lid which will make ‘XPS’ glow. They are in the fan exhaust vents, and the speaker vents. The LED's make it look very cool and the DellQuickset software is excellent in controlling almost every aspect of the notebook. You can control LED color, brightness, power settings etc.
There are also 5 indicators above the keyboard for Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, WiFI Indicator, and Bluetooth Indicator. They light up when any of these items are on. On the right hinge there are more lights: an AC power indicator, hard drive activity indicator, and a battery indicator.
The XPS 2 comes with a WUXGA 1920x1200 Ultrasharp TrueLife (glossy) display that is very similar to my Toshiba but bigger.
There is NO picture does this laptop any justice – it is very cool whilst being fun and seriously powerful.
The XPS-2 has volume and DVD playback controls in the front panel, six USB ports, and an SD card reader.
On firing up, the Dell guff takes over and McAffee demands that you register. I didn’t want the McAffee stuff as it slows the PC down so it’s been deleted.
I loaded up AShampoo Optimizer and UltraWincleaner and ran them to clean all the rubbish off the hard drive and used Partition Expert to create a backup partition. Plus Antivir and Adaware for protection.
HARDWARE/PERIPHERALS
The DVD writer on my XPS2 is the SONY DVD+-RW DW-D56A which reads and writes at 8x.
The hard drive in my XPS 2 is the Fujitsu 80 GB 5400 rpm hard drive. It’s very quiet.
The Ac adapter is fairly large and does get warm under use. It has an ‘ON’ LED indicator and is made in Thailand.
I haven’t used the keyboard much yet but it feels solid with no flex. I don’t really have any complaints about the keyboard other than a dedicated numeric keypad would have been nice.
The touchpad is, well, a touchpad, the only criticism being that the buttons are a bit clunky. I don’t use these much, preferring an optical mouse even when away from base. Dell threw in a standard USB optical mouse which performs well and feels comfy.
THE SCREEN
According to Powerstrip to I have the LG LPL0000 display. The screen has a glossy look as per my Tosh. The screen has 7 different brightness levels. It is 17” across the diagonal. I did a careful visual test with a magnifying glass and spotted no dead pixels.
LIGHT LEAKAGE?
There is some minor leakage (i.e. a glow) at the bottom of the screen. But frankly I only noticed it because I was looking for it.
SPARKLES
I’ve read so much on the ‘sparkle’ issue I naturally wanted to see what all the fuss is about. I opened notepad as advised on Notebookforums.com and looked at the white background to check for sparkles. To be honest I don’t really know what I’m looking for but saw nothing unexpected. So on that basis I can truthfully say the display is superb – with nothing to detract from enjoying it - you have to witness Half Life 2 with everything wound up to fully appreciate it.
GRAPHICS CARD
The XPS 2 uses the nVidia Geforce GO 6800 Ultra 256 MB video memory graphics card which is the most powerful graphics card available. This is the only laptop that uses this card at the moment as far as I know. What it does mean is that the XPS2 will eat any game available for breakfast and not break into a sweat.
Dell claims in one of their press releases that they may release a future graphics card upgrade for the XPS 2 like they did for the original XPS. This would be a good move – only Rock advertise their machines as graphics card upgradeable as far as I know.
I read somewhere that ATI are releasing their X800XT in mid-May so things should get very interesting soon.
Anyway I’m happy knowing I’ve got the leading edge card and PC so should be OK for any game to released in the next couple of years.
AUDIO & SPEAKERS
I’ve been used to excellent sound (for a laptop) with my Toshiba that has 3 speakers - two on the front and a subwoofer. The XPS2 has a similar setup and the speakers sound very good and can play loud enough for a normal room. The headphone output has good volume with no white noise. There is an SPDIF out and microphone input but surprisingly no mike or videocam embedded into the display surround that seems to be the norm these days with VoIP and chatting being so popular.
WIRELESS PERFORMANCE
I use a Netgear DG834G Modem/Router/WAP that works very successfully with all 4 laptops in my household plus my PDA. On entering the WEP key the XPS2 hooked straight into my network and works well in all areas of the house, including the furthest room in an extension which is 50 feet away from the router with 2 internals and an external wall in the way. The PC detected the usual neighbours’ wireless networks plus a new one at the school about 250 metres away!
CONNECTORS
6 USB 2.0 (the most I’ve seen on any laptop)
1 Kensington Lock Slot
Headphone Out
Microphone In
Firewire 1394a 4 pin port
SD Card Slot
PC Card Type II Cardbus Slot
DVI
VGA
S-Video Out
10/100/1000 Gigabit Lan internal NIC
56k internal modem
Intel ProWireless 802.11b/g mini PCI Wireless LAN card
Dell also supplied a breakout adapter that plugs into the S-Video Out Port which will add a coaxial digital SPDIF output and a composite video output along with the S-Video output.
BATTERY
Dell include a 9 cell SMART lithium ion battery. The battery status can be checked if the computer is off by pressing a button on the battery which is useful. I have not yet tested battery life, but according to the windows battery life indicator it should last somewhere between 2:15 and 2:30 depending on the load. This fine for me particularly as I’ve got a second battery (I got Dell to throw in a second battery as part of the package). Although of course you need to switch off to replace the battery. Both batteries are made in Japan.
FAN NOISE & HEAT
There are air intakes on both the bottom of the computer and on top by the keyboard. The CPU fan is located on the left rear with the GPU fan located on the right rear with dedicated air intakes for both. Fan noise is minimal even though both fans appear to be on most of the time on their low speed. I also use an Akasa laptop cooler which emits a constant low fan noise that I actually find soothing and this is louder than the XPS2 fan noise.
All laptops get warm and some hot. My 2 son’s Tiny and Amilo lappies get quite hot and they both use coolers on their desktops. The XPS2 gets warm but not hot – but enough to need some insulation if you’re using it on your lap to prevent discomfort but there’s no danger of getting burned.
GAMES PERFORMANCE
This is what it’s all about. I loaded up Half Life 2, set everything to maximum and frankly got blown away. To the point that I’m going to start the game again. I’ll load up Doom3 and FarCry too when I get some time. This machine plays Half Life 2 with such ease that hopefully I’ll be future-proof for a few years to come. My 3DMARK05 scores were:
‘out-of-the-box’ drivers 71.72 (I think) 4094
76.50 drivers from www.guru3d.com 5027
I read on Notebookforums.com that a fresh install would probably increase that score but that sounds like a lot of work for a few extra score points.
SUPER PI PERFORMANCE
Super Pi is a neat little program that determines how many seconds the computer needs to calculate Pi to a fixed number of decimal places. This is a fair indication of your computer’s processing power. Anything below 1 minute to 1 million dec. places is currently considered to be seriously fast. I tested both my Tosh and the XPS2:
Calculate pi to………..1 million dec. places and 2 million dec. places
Toshiba 2.4GHz Pentium 512MB RAM1min 23sec, 3min 22sec resp.
Dell XPS2 M770 2.13GHz 1GB RAM36secs and 1min 32secs resp.
You can download this programme from: http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=36
or do a search for ‘superpi’ on Google.
THOSE LEDS
Well, Dell have come up trumps here. They’ve tried to break away from the normal grey/silver/black laptop design and the addition of a few inexpensive LEDs has produced an attractive feature that I’ve not seen on a production PC before. Very much a custom PC feeling about it. I didn’t buy this laptop for the LEDs but they are fun! The LEDs are in the lid, front speakers, and exhaust vents. Each zone can have a different color, or they may be linked together. The LED’s brightness can also be linked to the brightness of the main display. If the main brightness increases the LEDs get brighter or vice versa.
You can change the light settings (up to 16 colours) to suit your mood through Dell's Quickset interface and under the XPS Gaming Interface.
You can also change the lights in the BIOS when the computer first boots up by pressing f2 right before going into the Windows splash screen.
NEGATIVES?
Well to be honest I’m struggling here.
•Cost –yes but it’s no more than a Alienware, Rock or similar high spec laptop. And a guy’s got have his toys.
•It’s a Dell? Yes would have been my response only a couple of months ago but Dell have excelled in all areas with this effort. Dell’s customer service has received some criticism but so does every manufacturer’s if you go back through the threads on www.whatlaptop.co.uk.
•Bloatware – there’s loads of it and needs careful pruning or a fresh install otherwise it will hinder performance.
•The sparkle issue? A non-event for me but undoubtably a criticism from other buyers.
•Those LEDs? Don’t buy it if you don’t think you will like the light effects, although I can’t imagine why, and anyway you can switch them off. Sort of beats the object though. I like the lightshow and I think most buyers will.
CONCLUSION
I was thinking of getting a Dell 8600 a couple of years ago but read so much bad press about poor build quality and lousy support on this forum that I went for my Toshiba instead. In fact my first Pentium desktop some years back was a Dell which was DOA! However this XPS2 is so far removed from all that that it’s almost hard to believe it’s a Dell!
Aesthetically Dell have designed a very cool laptop with the stylish casing and LED lights. The two tone design is very eye-catching. There is NO picture does this laptop any justice – you have to see it to appreciate it. IMHO Dell has simply out-designed any other laptop currently available.
The M770 chip and 6800 Ultra card are currently an unbeatable combination. The benchmarks prove it.
It is a very solid feeling laptop and seems to be built very well.
All in all I’m surprised that Dell have come up with this gorgeous looking powerhouse. It’s set the bar higher in performance and aesthetic innovation and it’ll be interesting to see how the competition reacts in the months to come.
I’ll finish with a quote from PCMag.com (review date: 02.24.05):
”The Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 is the best gaming machine seen so far, and it'll light up your room like a Christmas tree with its built-in light show. Add to the mix a super set of top-of-the-line components and you have the ultimate gaming machine.”
We have 3 other laptops:
My (now my wife’s) is a Toshiba 5200-902 Pentium 2.4GHz 512M RAM
My 16 year-old son has a Tiny MK64-3200 Mediabook P4 3.2GHz
My 13 year-old son has an Amilo A1630 P4 3.7GHz
These are all networked via a Netgear 802.11g wifi router.
As a matter of interest all 4 PCs have worked faultlessly, yes, even the Tiny, but I do keep them clean with AShampoo Optimizer, UltraWincleaner, AdAware, Antivir and regular defragging.
I’m an avid gamer (I know – sad at 60) and having researched the available hardware in Feb/early March this year I got it narrowed down to a short list of 1 - the Rock Extreme XTi 3.6 which received rave reviews (e.g. PCPro April 05). My only real reservations were the battery life (< 1 hour), Clevo chassis (heat, weight >12 lbs) and cost (c.£2.3k).
Just before I parted with the money I spotted early reviews from US purchasers of the XPS2 on http://notebookforums.com/. The reported performance figures knocked the Rock for six. 3DMark05 – around 5000! Battery life in excess of 2 hours. Weight 8.5 lbs. The downsides were no X-Black screen and it’s a Dell (THE DARK SIDE)!
On release in the UK (mid March05) the price fitted too – for my configuration <£2.2k with 3 years NBD support as per the Rock.
So I resisted valiantly for a few weeks still sitting on the fence but the reports seemed very favourable and my drool factor was up so high reading more reviews on http://notebookforums.com/ that I had to have it and ordered it on 28th April 2005. It arrived from Ireland unannounced, despite Dell’s assurances of 2 days notice, 3 working days later. Nice to get it so quickly but it was pure chance I was in on that day.
SPECIFICATION:
Pentium M770 2.13GHz
17” Ultrasharp Widescreen WUXGA (1920x1200)
1024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM
80GB (5400rpm) HDD
8xDVD+/-RW Drive
Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 Ultra with 256MB DDR
802.11g LAN card, Gigabit LAN NIC, 56k modem
Optical mouse
Li-ion battery + 1 spare
3yr NBD on-site support
Price - £2176
OPENING THE BOX!
I have purchased 12 PCs for personal use since 1983 and have never lost the thrill of this moment. It’s like being a kid at Christmas. Told you I was sad.
Out of the box, the XPS2 had thick plastic sheets covering the aluminum LCD cover and the area below the keyboard. The LCD cover had another skin-tight polythene protector sheet that is very hard to detect. Plus foam padding sheets covering the keyboard.
Included in my box:
The laptop
A video break-out-box with S-video, composite and digital audio
Spare battery (negotiated as part of the deal)
Windows XP Home SP2 CD
Dell Drivers and Utilities CD
Cyberlink PowerDVD CD
Sonic MyDVD and RecordNow CDs
MS Works 7.0 CD
Power Unit
Modem lead with BT adaptor
Dell optical mouse
Owner’s manual and startup poster
FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND FIRING UP FIRST TIME
The XPS 2 has a black border around silver casing that is very stylish and a silver polished lid. The lid has a ‘armour’ effect but is actually a smooth glossy polished aluminum type of surface that in the flesh looks great.
Plug in and there are lots of coloured LEDs. The LEDs are situated in the lid which will make ‘XPS’ glow. They are in the fan exhaust vents, and the speaker vents. The LED's make it look very cool and the DellQuickset software is excellent in controlling almost every aspect of the notebook. You can control LED color, brightness, power settings etc.
There are also 5 indicators above the keyboard for Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, WiFI Indicator, and Bluetooth Indicator. They light up when any of these items are on. On the right hinge there are more lights: an AC power indicator, hard drive activity indicator, and a battery indicator.
The XPS 2 comes with a WUXGA 1920x1200 Ultrasharp TrueLife (glossy) display that is very similar to my Toshiba but bigger.
There is NO picture does this laptop any justice – it is very cool whilst being fun and seriously powerful.
The XPS-2 has volume and DVD playback controls in the front panel, six USB ports, and an SD card reader.
On firing up, the Dell guff takes over and McAffee demands that you register. I didn’t want the McAffee stuff as it slows the PC down so it’s been deleted.
I loaded up AShampoo Optimizer and UltraWincleaner and ran them to clean all the rubbish off the hard drive and used Partition Expert to create a backup partition. Plus Antivir and Adaware for protection.
HARDWARE/PERIPHERALS
The DVD writer on my XPS2 is the SONY DVD+-RW DW-D56A which reads and writes at 8x.
The hard drive in my XPS 2 is the Fujitsu 80 GB 5400 rpm hard drive. It’s very quiet.
The Ac adapter is fairly large and does get warm under use. It has an ‘ON’ LED indicator and is made in Thailand.
I haven’t used the keyboard much yet but it feels solid with no flex. I don’t really have any complaints about the keyboard other than a dedicated numeric keypad would have been nice.
The touchpad is, well, a touchpad, the only criticism being that the buttons are a bit clunky. I don’t use these much, preferring an optical mouse even when away from base. Dell threw in a standard USB optical mouse which performs well and feels comfy.
THE SCREEN
According to Powerstrip to I have the LG LPL0000 display. The screen has a glossy look as per my Tosh. The screen has 7 different brightness levels. It is 17” across the diagonal. I did a careful visual test with a magnifying glass and spotted no dead pixels.
LIGHT LEAKAGE?
There is some minor leakage (i.e. a glow) at the bottom of the screen. But frankly I only noticed it because I was looking for it.
SPARKLES
I’ve read so much on the ‘sparkle’ issue I naturally wanted to see what all the fuss is about. I opened notepad as advised on Notebookforums.com and looked at the white background to check for sparkles. To be honest I don’t really know what I’m looking for but saw nothing unexpected. So on that basis I can truthfully say the display is superb – with nothing to detract from enjoying it - you have to witness Half Life 2 with everything wound up to fully appreciate it.
GRAPHICS CARD
The XPS 2 uses the nVidia Geforce GO 6800 Ultra 256 MB video memory graphics card which is the most powerful graphics card available. This is the only laptop that uses this card at the moment as far as I know. What it does mean is that the XPS2 will eat any game available for breakfast and not break into a sweat.
Dell claims in one of their press releases that they may release a future graphics card upgrade for the XPS 2 like they did for the original XPS. This would be a good move – only Rock advertise their machines as graphics card upgradeable as far as I know.
I read somewhere that ATI are releasing their X800XT in mid-May so things should get very interesting soon.
Anyway I’m happy knowing I’ve got the leading edge card and PC so should be OK for any game to released in the next couple of years.
AUDIO & SPEAKERS
I’ve been used to excellent sound (for a laptop) with my Toshiba that has 3 speakers - two on the front and a subwoofer. The XPS2 has a similar setup and the speakers sound very good and can play loud enough for a normal room. The headphone output has good volume with no white noise. There is an SPDIF out and microphone input but surprisingly no mike or videocam embedded into the display surround that seems to be the norm these days with VoIP and chatting being so popular.
WIRELESS PERFORMANCE
I use a Netgear DG834G Modem/Router/WAP that works very successfully with all 4 laptops in my household plus my PDA. On entering the WEP key the XPS2 hooked straight into my network and works well in all areas of the house, including the furthest room in an extension which is 50 feet away from the router with 2 internals and an external wall in the way. The PC detected the usual neighbours’ wireless networks plus a new one at the school about 250 metres away!
CONNECTORS
6 USB 2.0 (the most I’ve seen on any laptop)
1 Kensington Lock Slot
Headphone Out
Microphone In
Firewire 1394a 4 pin port
SD Card Slot
PC Card Type II Cardbus Slot
DVI
VGA
S-Video Out
10/100/1000 Gigabit Lan internal NIC
56k internal modem
Intel ProWireless 802.11b/g mini PCI Wireless LAN card
Dell also supplied a breakout adapter that plugs into the S-Video Out Port which will add a coaxial digital SPDIF output and a composite video output along with the S-Video output.
BATTERY
Dell include a 9 cell SMART lithium ion battery. The battery status can be checked if the computer is off by pressing a button on the battery which is useful. I have not yet tested battery life, but according to the windows battery life indicator it should last somewhere between 2:15 and 2:30 depending on the load. This fine for me particularly as I’ve got a second battery (I got Dell to throw in a second battery as part of the package). Although of course you need to switch off to replace the battery. Both batteries are made in Japan.
FAN NOISE & HEAT
There are air intakes on both the bottom of the computer and on top by the keyboard. The CPU fan is located on the left rear with the GPU fan located on the right rear with dedicated air intakes for both. Fan noise is minimal even though both fans appear to be on most of the time on their low speed. I also use an Akasa laptop cooler which emits a constant low fan noise that I actually find soothing and this is louder than the XPS2 fan noise.
All laptops get warm and some hot. My 2 son’s Tiny and Amilo lappies get quite hot and they both use coolers on their desktops. The XPS2 gets warm but not hot – but enough to need some insulation if you’re using it on your lap to prevent discomfort but there’s no danger of getting burned.
GAMES PERFORMANCE
This is what it’s all about. I loaded up Half Life 2, set everything to maximum and frankly got blown away. To the point that I’m going to start the game again. I’ll load up Doom3 and FarCry too when I get some time. This machine plays Half Life 2 with such ease that hopefully I’ll be future-proof for a few years to come. My 3DMARK05 scores were:
‘out-of-the-box’ drivers 71.72 (I think) 4094
76.50 drivers from www.guru3d.com 5027
I read on Notebookforums.com that a fresh install would probably increase that score but that sounds like a lot of work for a few extra score points.
SUPER PI PERFORMANCE
Super Pi is a neat little program that determines how many seconds the computer needs to calculate Pi to a fixed number of decimal places. This is a fair indication of your computer’s processing power. Anything below 1 minute to 1 million dec. places is currently considered to be seriously fast. I tested both my Tosh and the XPS2:
Calculate pi to………..1 million dec. places and 2 million dec. places
Toshiba 2.4GHz Pentium 512MB RAM1min 23sec, 3min 22sec resp.
Dell XPS2 M770 2.13GHz 1GB RAM36secs and 1min 32secs resp.
You can download this programme from: http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=36
or do a search for ‘superpi’ on Google.
THOSE LEDS
Well, Dell have come up trumps here. They’ve tried to break away from the normal grey/silver/black laptop design and the addition of a few inexpensive LEDs has produced an attractive feature that I’ve not seen on a production PC before. Very much a custom PC feeling about it. I didn’t buy this laptop for the LEDs but they are fun! The LEDs are in the lid, front speakers, and exhaust vents. Each zone can have a different color, or they may be linked together. The LED’s brightness can also be linked to the brightness of the main display. If the main brightness increases the LEDs get brighter or vice versa.
You can change the light settings (up to 16 colours) to suit your mood through Dell's Quickset interface and under the XPS Gaming Interface.
You can also change the lights in the BIOS when the computer first boots up by pressing f2 right before going into the Windows splash screen.
NEGATIVES?
Well to be honest I’m struggling here.
•Cost –yes but it’s no more than a Alienware, Rock or similar high spec laptop. And a guy’s got have his toys.
•It’s a Dell? Yes would have been my response only a couple of months ago but Dell have excelled in all areas with this effort. Dell’s customer service has received some criticism but so does every manufacturer’s if you go back through the threads on www.whatlaptop.co.uk.
•Bloatware – there’s loads of it and needs careful pruning or a fresh install otherwise it will hinder performance.
•The sparkle issue? A non-event for me but undoubtably a criticism from other buyers.
•Those LEDs? Don’t buy it if you don’t think you will like the light effects, although I can’t imagine why, and anyway you can switch them off. Sort of beats the object though. I like the lightshow and I think most buyers will.
CONCLUSION
I was thinking of getting a Dell 8600 a couple of years ago but read so much bad press about poor build quality and lousy support on this forum that I went for my Toshiba instead. In fact my first Pentium desktop some years back was a Dell which was DOA! However this XPS2 is so far removed from all that that it’s almost hard to believe it’s a Dell!
Aesthetically Dell have designed a very cool laptop with the stylish casing and LED lights. The two tone design is very eye-catching. There is NO picture does this laptop any justice – you have to see it to appreciate it. IMHO Dell has simply out-designed any other laptop currently available.
The M770 chip and 6800 Ultra card are currently an unbeatable combination. The benchmarks prove it.
It is a very solid feeling laptop and seems to be built very well.
All in all I’m surprised that Dell have come up with this gorgeous looking powerhouse. It’s set the bar higher in performance and aesthetic innovation and it’ll be interesting to see how the competition reacts in the months to come.
I’ll finish with a quote from PCMag.com (review date: 02.24.05):
”The Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 is the best gaming machine seen so far, and it'll light up your room like a Christmas tree with its built-in light show. Add to the mix a super set of top-of-the-line components and you have the ultimate gaming machine.”
