This likable little notebook with its sleek satin-silver finish starts at $1349 and comes with some nice Media Center-style software.

PC World tested a more expensive $1786 configuration, featuring a top-of-the-line 2-GHz Pentium M 755 processor and 512MB of RAM. Our test unit earned a WorldBench 5 score of 82, so it has enough processing power for any mainstream application. Battery life with the standard 4-cell battery on our test unit lasted only 2.5 hours, but you can get an 8-cell battery for just $99, though it weighs half a pound more. The 710m’s modular bay–rare on an ultraportable–lets you add a second hard drive or double up on batteries for an even better unplugged experience. Our test unit came with a double-layer DVD±RW burner and an 80GB hard drive and the full Corel WordPerfect Office 12 set of applications.

Some quibbles: the keyboard is slightly cramped. (With practice I was able to hit the half-size question mark key and master the keystroke combinations required for paging up and down.) Plus, the docking options are meager: Dell sells only a USB port replicator that hangs off the left side of the notebook by a cable.

The icing on the cake is Dell’s Media Experience, a Windows Media Center Edition knockoff with movie, DVD/CD, and photo slide-show applications. It mimics the Media Center Edition with a big blue menu, and it’s easy to move through, though it lacks a remote control to take advantage of it. All that’s missing is a TV feature since this notebook has no TV tuner option. The 710m is too small to have good speakers, but at least the port for the headphones is located on the front.

Upshot: Dell’s latest consumer ultraportable would make a nice unit for budget-constricted professionals on the go.

The Dell Inspiron 1200 with a square black case and a bulky 14.1-inch XGA screen. It looks like a Buick next to newer notebooks, and the battery has never lasted more than a couple of hours, but I have to give it credit. In the seven years we’ve been together, my Inspiron 2500 and its sturdy keyboard have never let me down.

The Dell Inspiron 1200, one of the new breed of ultracheap notebooks, reincarnates my old faithful with a similar square black case, screen, battery life, and trusty keyboard. At $499 after a $50 instant rebate, the 1200 is a lot cheaper than my old budget buy, which cost me about $1500, if memory serves. But today, with better choices even at the $500 level, I’d pass on this Dell.

Although solidly constructed and upgradable, the Inspiron 1200 is a very basic, plain-looking unit with a small 30GB 4200-rpm hard drive, a 1.3-GHz Celeron M 350 processor, and 256MB of built-in RAM (with one empty slot for adding another DIMM). Connections are somewhat limited, though you do get ethernet and modem jacks, a VGA port, headphone and microphone mini-jacks, and one PC Card slot. Built-in Wi-Fi is not an option. It also offers three USB ports–a generous number–though they’re all inconveniently located on the back of the notebook (a design drawback the Inspiron 2500 shared).

Applications and DVD movies look fine on the 14.1-inch SVGA screen, but audio is weak and not terribly rich. The highlight of this 6.3-pound Windows XP Home-based unit (7.2-pound travel weight, including power adapter) is its right-side DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive for burning your own data and music CDs. Another nice extra is WordPerfect word processing software.

The 2.4-hour battery life and WorldBench 5 score of 57 is good enough for mainstream applications and short stints away from an electrical outlet. (Put in perspective, the Inspiron 1200 lags by about 40 percent the fastest notebook we’ve tested, a Micro Express CL5620 that earned a score of 97 thanks to a 2-GHz Pentium M and 512MB of RAM.) Unfortunately, the battery is an older nickel metal hydride type, which tends to wear out faster than the better-quality lithium ion batteries typically used today. A bonus: If you upgrade to a lithium ion battery ($79), you get a free 64MB Dell USB memory key.

Upshot: Upshot: You can get basic office work done and burn your own CDs with Dell’s bargain-basement Inspiron 1200. But there are nicer-looking and better-equipped $500 notebooks, namely the Acer Aspire 3003LCi or HP’s Compaq M2000.

At a 4.7-pound minimum weight, the M1330 is one of the lightest 13.3-inch laptops I’ve seen. The design is satisfying overall. This complete overhaul of the 12-inch XPS M1210 has a bigger screen yet weighs less, and it’s no taller than its predecessor because of new dropped hinges. One of the nicest features is its edge-to-edge keyboard; though the keys don’t depress far, their large size makes typing comfortable. One heads-up: The M1330 lacks a modem port. While such an omission is not surprising on a notebook of this size, it’s still something to be aware of.

Our test unit came with the optional, stunningly thin $200 LED-backlit screen. Even with the brightness cranked up, however, the 0.87-inch-thick screen was not as bright as the LED-backlit screens of other notebooks I’ve tested (such as the Toshiba Portege R400-S4931, Asus U1F, and Fujitsu LifeBook P7230), which enjoy a higher brightness specification (measured in nits).

The M1330, which has an HDMI port and a remote control, delivers a good multimedia experience for such a small notebook. The speakers are loud (though not stellar), and a bevy of buttons add convenience. You can use the Dell Media Direct button to bypass Windows and launch a movie or CD, and then use the backlit touch-sensitive controls to adjust the volume or change tracks. These controls are similar to the touch-sensitive control panel of HP Pavilion notebooks, but they have the added advantage of visual feedback in the form of a blue LED that briefly pulses around each selected area. A TV tuner and remote come in a $125 extra-cost kit. The slot-fed DVD drive, while more convenient than a tray, is as noisy as other slot-feds when accepting discs. Unfortunately, Dell gives no option for a Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD drive to take advantage of the high-definition, wide-screen display.

Performance, though, was superior. Equipped with a 2.2-GHz Core Duo T7500 chip and 2GB of RAM, our review machine produced a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 82, putting it in third place among all-purpose notebooks and on a par with other similarly configured systems. We saw very good results upgrading from the standard four-cell battery to a nine-cell unit. Though it accounts for half a pound of the laptop’s weight (and $60 of our configuration’s $2179 price), the better battery lasted 7 minutes shy of 5 hours–90 minutes longer than the category average.

The M1330 is available in black for $50 less than the Crimson Red version we tested. But if you want a thin and light notebook that makes a visual impression as strong as its performance, the flashy color will do the trick.

My test unit’s configuration was expensive for an all-purpose notebook at $1748 (as of 9/12/07), but it included a long-life battery, a 160GB hard drive, and integrated mobile broadband. Our configuration lacked the optional $50 Webcam, as well as the optional $550 Blu-ray Disc drive; the drive might have been a good complement to our machine’s high-definition, WXGA+, glossy screen, which was bright and easy to read. If you don’t like the glossy screen’s reflectiveness, you can have the screen with a non-glossy, antiglare coating for the same price.

The 6-pound 1420 is a little heavy for a notebook with only a 14.1-inch screen, but it’s very well crafted. The comfortable keyboard features mouse buttons with tactile finger ridges, and the battery has an external power gauge. Your choice from among seven optional lid colors ($50) dresses up the 1420′s standard black case. Our test unit came in a blindingly bright Alpine White. Other hues include Ruby Red, Flamingo Pink, and Spring Green.

Better at multimedia than most notebooks its size, the 1420 offers rich, medium-volume sound. The laptop also sports Dell’s standard Media Direct button, which works better than other instant-on buttons. With this button, you get direct access not only to movie, music, and photo players but also to office-application viewers, a feature that lets you check, say, an Outlook phone number or a PowerPoint slide without having to start Windows. Dell sells some reasonably priced multimedia add-ons, too, ranging from a $15 IR travel remote to a $125 TV tuner and remote package for taking full advantage of the entertainment applications in Windows Vista Home Premium (our test model’s operating system).

Performance was excellent. Our test unit’s nine-cell battery lasted nearly 5 hours. Equipped with a 2.2-GHz Core Duo T7500 processor and 2GB of RAM, the 1420 rose to the top of its class with a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 83. That score put it in a tie for first place, among currently tested all-purpose notebooks, with a similarly equipped Gateway E-475M. (Two other similarly equipped laptops earned a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 mark of 80.) Our test unit was a decent 3D game player, with an average frames-per-second rate of 42 (30 fps is considered minimally acceptable, and some notebooks manage 100 fps).

Overall this notebook has much to like. It’s fast, capable, and as colorful as you care to make it.

Dell XPS M1210 has a excellent entertainment-oriented ultraportable uses Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo processor.

Packed with the latest mobile technology and Intel’s latest processor, the Core 2 Duo, the XPS M1210 is Dell’s latest ultraportable entertainment notebook–and a good choice for anyone who needs to work on the go.

Our test unit, equipped with a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 processor and 1GB of DDR2-667 SDRAM, produced a WorldBench 5 score of 102, a result that’s 5 percent better than the mark of 97 earned by the average XP Media Center Edition notebook with the same-speed equivalent of the previous-generation Core Duo CPU. And our test machine’s solid battery life should give you ample time to spend an afternoon telecommuting at the local coffee shop or watching an in-flight DVD: The M1210 lasted 4 hours, 23 minutes on a nine-cell battery.

Dell calls the top-of-the-line configuration that we tested the “Mobile Media Guru.” In addition to a 120GB 5400-rpm hard drive and a double-layer DVD burner, it offer bonus A/V features: an integrated 1.3-megapixel swivel Webcam with dedicated shutter button and directional microphone, one pair of noise-isolation earbuds, Skype VOIP videoconferencing software, and a built-in mobile-broadband antenna. (To make use of the antenna, you’ll have to dole out another $179 for an integrated broadband card and, of course, pay a hefty monthly subscription to Cingular or Verizon for service.) Our $1909 price (as of 9/8/06) also included Bluetooth short-range wireless communications and a dedicated nVidia GeForce Go 7400 video card with 256MB of memory.

The M1210′s design helps it stand out from other small notebooks. The 5-pound unit has a bright, 12.1-inch wide-aspect screen and a full-size keyboard, plus a touchpad with a scroll zone and big, cushy mouse buttons. The external battery gauge, which lets you see how much power you have left without having to turn on the notebook, is one of many thoughtful conveniences.

Movies and media are just one touch away via the keyboard’s MediaDirect button, which launches a menu for playing DVDs, MP3s, and photo slide shows without first starting Windows. To control volume and tracks, you have your choice of using the mouse or seven media buttons located on the front of the notebook. The speakers are nothing to write home about, but dual headphone jacks let two people at once enjoy good stereo sound in private. A $101 USB TV tuner and $29 remote control are optional.

The notebook’s full complement of connections includes four USB ports, a FireWire port, and a three-in-one memory card slot tucked beneath the optical drive–an unusual but adequately convenient spot. One of the notebook’s coolest features, the Wi-Fi Catcher switch with LED, lets you search for a wireless signal–Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or WWAN–before turning on the unit, saving time and battery life.

Storage and memory are both user upgradable, with the hard drive and one of the DIMM slots located in separate bottom compartments. The second memory slot is harder to reach than most that are located beneath the keyboard; its location requires disconnecting the cable and a few other extra steps, but the process is doable. The only other small design faux pas is the ExpressCard slot’s old-fashioned eject stick. Like most, it is maddeningly difficult to store.

As one of Dell’s “luxury” consumer notebooks, the M1210 comes with a rare full printed user manual, which is thick with attractive illustrations. Microsoft Works 8 rounds out the offering.

With its bevy of entertainment features and bonuses, the lightweight Dell XPS M1210 will keep you both entertained and productive when on the road.

This 17-inch dual-core notebook includes a TV tuner and delivers outstanding mobile gaming performance.

Dell’s first dual-core offering is both a workhorse and a multimedia star. It isn’t cheap–our review unit cost $2949 as of March 27, 2006–but no other notebook in its class does a better job of providing instant entertainment on a 17-inch screen.

Equipped with a 2-GHz Core Duo T2500 processor and 1GB of RAM, the Inspiron E1705 earned a superior WorldBench 5 score of 97. To help you make the best use of your down time, the new E line (which includes the E1505, with a 15.4-inch wide screen) features Dell’s one-touch MediaDirect button. With the notebook off and without starting Windows, you can press the button once to watch a DVD movie or to access videos, music, or photo slide shows stored on the hard drive, an optical drive, or a USB key or memory card placed in the five-in-one media reader. The only option that the E1705 lacks is instant-on live TV. To watch TV, you first have to launch the Windows Media Center Edition operating system.

At the time I looked at the E1705, it had the best graphics card Dell offered–a top-notch nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS with 256MB of VRAM–and it showed in our gaming tests. (A new flagship gaming notebook alternative, the Inspiron m1710, should be available in April with an nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX card.) The E1705 finished first in all but one of our game tests, with results such as 98 frames per second in Doom 3 at 1280 by 1024 resolution and 32-bit color, with antialiasing turned off.

The E1705 will turn heads with its cream-colored trim and bright blue LEDs. At 8.2 pounds and with a 3-hour battery life (using the $79 nine-cell battery), it’s a friendly travel partner.

The E1705 can be configured with up to 100GB of storage, and it comes with a whopping six USB ports, along with a cutting-edge ExpressCard slot and a DVI-D port for the latest flat-panel screens. This port isn’t compatible with analog monitor adapters, but the unit includes a legacy VGA-out port as well. My one complaint about the design is that the DVD burner’s eject button is flush with the case and hard to locate by touch.

It’s something of a pain to keep track of Dell’s external TV tuner, a USB unit slightly larger than a pack of playing cards. But because it’s external, you can save a bit of travel weight by leaving it behind.

For people who plan on using an E line portable to replace a desktop, Dell sells Kensington USB 2.0 docking stations customized for Dell notebooks. A simple port replicator costs $79 and a better one including screen stand is $129.

Our review unit will please those for whom good performance is a priority. Equipped with 2GB of memory and the best notebook CPU Dell offered for this model at the time of our review (a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7250), our $999 (as of 2/7/08) Windows Vista Home Premium machine earned a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 78. That’s 17 percent faster than the average score of 65 earned by the five under-$1000 laptops in this roundup, and even 13 percent better than the average of 69 earned by 16 recently tested all-purpose notebooks in any price range. With the battery upgraded from the standard four-cell to a six-cell ($15 extra), our notebook lasted a fairly generous 4 hours, 4 minutes on one charge, about 10 minutes longer than our five budget laptop test group’s average.

About the only thing the Inspiron 1525 can’t handle is 3D graphics; with an Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 and no dedicated video card option, it’s limited to simple games and other 2D applications.

The 1525 is wedge-shaped but svelte at 6 pounds, including a 15.4-inch 1280 by 800 resolution screen, a DVD writer, and a good keyboard. The port variety and layout is fine (the 1525 is one of the few notebooks in this price range with an HDMI connection). And like the excellent HP Pavilion dv2600se, the 1525 gives multimedia lovers lots of entertainment features: an instant-on button, a Webcam, and even dual headphone jacks. In fact, I like the Dell’s MediaDirect button more than the HP’s QuickPlay because it has Instant Office, an application viewer that lets you access your calendar, contacts and PowerPoint presentations. Also, Dell’s volume gauge is easier to use. Alas, the raspy-sounding speakers take some of the shine off the 1525′s entertainment appeal.

The real beauty of the 1525 is its customizability. For instance, our glossy screen (a no-extra-cost option at the time of our review) was pretty reflective, so you might be happier with Dell’s standard antiglare screen. From a base configuration of $500, you can build your perfect sub-$1000 laptop that includes a lid in any one of 11 different colors ($25 usually, but included in our test model’s price), Bluetooth ($20), an integrated mobile broadband card ($150), and even built-in wireless USB ($150).

If choice of features is paramount in your budget laptop, the Inspiron 1525 is your best bet among the models in our test group.

Dell’s XPS M1710 is the notebook for the power desktop user who’s ready to go (sort of) mobile. Packed with high-performance hardware, it’s one of the fastest notebooks we’ve tested. But neither its price nor its weight is for the weak of heart.

Our shipping unit–priced at $3860–came with a 2.16-GHz Core Duo T2600 processor, 1GB of RAM, nVidia’s top-of-the-line 7900 GTX graphics chip (with 512MB of memory), a 100GB hard drive, and a DVD burner.

That’s a solid component list, and the M1710 put all that hardware to good use on our WorldBench 5 tests–its score of 106 tied with that of our previous top-performing power notebook, Alienware’s Aurora m7700.

The unit also did well in our Doom 3 and Half Life 2 gaming tests at 1280-by-1024 resolution with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering turned on, posting an impressive 88 and 113 frames per second in those respective games. I also fired up Bethesda’s Oblivion to run the system through its paces. This game, known for pushing even high-end desktop systems hard at its highest settings, ran very well on the M1710.

The unit’s battery life was less impressive, clocking in at just 2 hours and 33 minutes on one charge and earning only a Fair score compared with the battery life of other power notebooks we’ve recently tested. It underscores the fact that this 8.9-pound unit (10.6 pounds with its AC adapter) really is a desktop replacement.

One nice thing about a large chassis is the big screen that results, and this Dell’s crisp 17-inch display is the feature most likely to sell many users on the notebook. A wide-aspect panel with a whopping 1920-by-1200 resolution, it omits antiglare coating for a particularly sharp (if smudge-prone) picture. Sound, coming from two front-firing speakers and an integrated subwoofer, was good.

I found the keyboard pretty comfortable to use, although Dell should consider adding a separate numeric keypad (there’s plenty of real estate for one). The touchpad was responsive, and even lights up so you can see it at a dark LAN party.

The M1710 also won’t leave you wanting for ports. Six USB ports are scattered around the unit as well connections for gigabit ethernet, FireWire, headphones, and a mic. The plentiful video outputs include integrated S-video, VGA, and DVI, plus component video and S/PDIF digital-out using the included adapter. There’s also a five-in-one media card reader and an ExpressCard slot.

Dell hasn’t left much out of the M1710, and its high weight and price reflect that. However, if you’re a desktop user who’s put off buying a notebook for fear of giving up power, this notebook could be the one for you.

Upshot: Pricey giant-sized notebook offers processing and graphics power to spare plus a nice screen, but it’s not particularly mobile.

This well-rounded notebook is ideal for getting work done.

Dell’s Inspiron E1505, an entertainment notebook, including an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, music and photo editing, and movie viewing. The 6.9-pound E1505 also throws in pretty good speakers, dedicated media buttons, and a cushy keyboard with stylish white trim, giving you a great all-around choice for consumers who don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on a desktop replacement.

It’s $1186 (as of 11/6/06) E1505 came with the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system, a double-layer DVD burner, four USB ports, a FireWire port, an ExpressCard slot, and a three-in-one memory card reader. The laptop’s 15.4-inch WXGA screen is great for mainstream work, but if you need to see more on your screen at once, a WSXGA+ resolution is an option.

Now it unit has a 120GB hard drive. You can get a 160GB hard drive, still a relatively rare notebook option, for less than $60 more. Unfortunately, a built-in TV tuner is not an option, as it is on most other entertainment notebooks, but Dell’s USB TV tuner is just $104 extra. The small external box comes with all the cables you’ll need to connect to a cable box or a set-top box.

Dell’s Inspiron E1505 equipped with a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 processor and 1GB of RAM, our machine earned a WorldBench 5 score of 102, which ranks within the top 20 percent of notebooks we’ve tested. The first E1505 we reviewed–equipped with a 1.66-GHz Core Duo T2300 processor and 1GB of RAM–did not play games smoothly and ran noticeably slower than other notebooks when we worked in multiple windows. With the faster chip, the notebook is now a much better multitasker, on a par with competitors, but game play is still poor: The laptop managed just 19 frames per second when displaying Doom and 36 fps in Far Cry. The 64MB of dedicated video memory allowed by a 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X130 HyperMemory card just isn’t enough to get most games off the ground. (We didn’t test with the optional 256MB video card.)

The E1505 turned in excellent battery life, lasting 5.5 hours on one charge. The battery, which is located on the bottom of the notebook, sports an external gauge that lets you see how much juice is left before you have to plug the notebook in.

Like Dell’s high-end XPS entertainment portables and budget-friendly Inspiron counterparts, the E1505 has a unique “instant office” capability. The feature makes staying on top of business as simple as pressing the MediaDirect button. The button launches a menu that now includes not only the usual entertainment options–DVD, music, videos, and photos–but also additional menu selections for the application viewers. Without launching Windows, you can view–though not edit–your PowerPoint slides and Outlook and Outlook Express calendars and contacts. You can also play DVDs, music, and digital photo collections. So if you’ve forgotten the starting time for a meeting, just pause the movie and check your schedule.

Expandability is somewhat limited. The E1505 is user upgradable, with both the hard drive and memory chips in accessible bottom compartments. However, docking is nothing fancy, with only a couple of options–the better one being a screen stand port replicator, a $103 extra. (You must provide the wireless keyboard and mouse.)

For anybody who wants a computer this a great computer. It weighs about 12 pounds but that already for me. It is very fun and easy to use and will do everything I have asked and more. I’ve had this router for a few months now and I must say that I’m pretty impressed with it’s performance. The features that I use are VPN and wireless security and the performance is great.

Dell Inspiron 6000

We can see that the Dell Inspiron 6000′s wide screen than on most other 15.4-inch displays thanks to its WUXGA resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels. the Dell Inspiron 6000 work with higher-resolution photographs, more spreadsheet columns, and more tiled documents simultaneously on the Inspiron 6000 than you can on some 17-inch wide screens. The Inspiron 6000 is also available with a 1280-by-800-pixel WXGA screen or a 1680-by-1050-pixel WSXGA+ screen for $150 less or $50 less, respectively.

It has a lot more going for it than just its extra-high-resolution screen. We did test the nine-cell battery (a $99 option), and it lasted an impressive 5 hours on one charge, making the 6000 an excellent candidate for the road–if you don’t mind its 7.5-pound weight (I like this weight,it’s fit to me). An extra-fancy external power gauge helps you keep track of when you’ll need to recharge.

The Inspiron 6000 is a pretty laptop with a sloped front and cream-colored trim. Our unit had a multiformat DVD burner, plus FireWire and TV-out ports and four USB 2.0 ports, all placed for easy use. The 6000 accepts user upgrades easily. Like many laptops, it has two memory slots located in a compartment on the bottom of the laptop. But instead of residing in dovetailed slots, the modules lie side by side–an unusual arrangement that makes them more accessible than most. The hard drive is a breeze to remove, too: Just unscrew its bottom panel and tug the drive out through the right side of the case. Though the optical drive doesn’t have a lever for popping it out, you can boost it out by its lower edge after removing a security screw on the bottom of the case.

Dell Inspiron 6000

However,I have not found it any yet but I know the mouse pad is a little small for me; but maybe it is because I’m not use to it. and documentation is poor. some features like VPN don’t have proper guidance in the manual.

I think you’ll like the 6000′s panel of dedicated CD controls and its surprisingly good stereo sound. (Only one other model in our roundup, the Fujitsu LifeBook N6010, offered better audio.) There’s no instant-on button for playing discs without using Windows, but you can play CDs while the lid is closed, because the music buttons and speaker outlets remain exposed. Pressing one of the buttons momentarily lights the entire music panel’s bright blue LEDs, a helpful feature in dark environments.

The 2-GHz Pentium M 760-equipped review unit did well in our speed tests, earning a WorldBench 5 score of 89, about 8 percent above the average for systems equipped with the same processor.