Dell’s hefty Inspiron 9100 line truly is geared toward desktop replacement. These powerful systems can handle any tasks from the road that their desktop-bound brethren can do. The baseline 2.8GHz Pentium 4 HyperThreading processor and 256MB of DDR memory even sound like the specs you’d find in a new desktop system.

Couple that with ATI’s Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64MB of video memory, and you’ve got a system that can perform nicely in 3-D games and handling graphics and video as well.

The 40GB hard drive offers a good amount of storage space for program installs. At baseline, the optical drive is a plain DVD-ROM drive, although you can make that a combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive for only $45. If you want to be able to burn video to DVD, a high-speed 8X DVD+RW drive upgrade will cost you $229. You’ll also have to pay extra for video- and photo-editing software packages that Dell bundles with the line.

The huge 15.4-inch, wide-aspect-ratio screen is perfect for watching widescreen DVD movies on long flights. It also gives you more desktop space to work with, letting you open applications side-by-side, for example, without feeling too crowded.

There are plenty of connectivity ports on the large body of the 9100, including four USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire port. Although there are modem and Ethernet ports built in, there isn’t an integrated wireless option. However, adding an internal wireless card to the system costs only $32.

At about nine pounds, you’ll definitely know when you have the Inspiron 9100 in your laptop bag. But at least you can personalize it with snap covers to make it more distinct. For $39, you can choose from an array of patterns, such as bamboo or red lava, that give the cover of your laptop a more individualized appearance.

With prices starting at about $1,200, the power and performance that you can pack into the Dell Inspiron 9100’s large frame make it a great laptop for those users who don’t mind carrying around a few extra pounds.

Pro: Beautiful screen, desktop power.
Con: Quite heavy, no built-in wireless.



[Note: In 2006, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a voluntary recall of about 2.7 million lithium-ion battery packs used in Dell laptop computers. To learn more, follow this link]

Warranty
1 years limited