For several years, Dell has offered excellently priced portable computers for home and business users, and their new Inspiron E1505 laptop is no exception. Powered by Intel Core Duo or their new Core 2 Duo processors and featuring a great set of components, these laptops are some of the best bargains on the market.

The E1505s start out at $629 while being nicely equipped. The default CPU is the 1.73GHz Intel Core Duo T2250 which would work well for the average user. If you want more power, you can upgrade to Intel's latest processor family, the Core 2 Duo. The baseline 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5500 is $100 over the starting price and faster Core 2 Duos go up from there.

Dell includes a serviceable 512 MB of RAM at baseline, with 1 GB available at just $65 more. Going with just the Core Duo processor and this amount of RAM, the E1505 will be a stalwart portable computer for everything from basic office tasks to more intensive operations such as handling large graphics and video.

Storage space starts out at a respectable 60GB hard drive. You can beef the size of the drive up to 120GB for $75 or make it a faster 7,200rpm drive for $175, depending on whether you want more space or higher performance.

The optical drive on this portable computer isn't top of the line, just a basic CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive. This drive will burn audio and data and play DVD movies, but it can't handle any DVD media burns. If you want a DVD writer, Dell offers an upgrade to a Dual Layer DVD burner for a reasonable $30 over baseline. This drive can handle CD and DVD burns as well as burns to high capacity DL media that stores up to 8.5GB on a single disk.

These E1505 portable computers ship with Windows XP Media Center operating system, so they're well suited for handling multimedia files. There's no TV tuner built in, so if you want to use these laptops for watching and recording television, you'll have to add an external tuner. They do offer Dell's MediaDirect software so you can play music CDs or DVD movies without having to boot up the entire operating system.

The 15.4-inch widescreen display is a nice sweet spot for portable computers--it gives you a spacious screen for watching movies and opening multiple windows yet it's not so large that it makes the laptop prohibitively heavy (the E1505 weighs in at around six pounds).

Our main grievance with these portable computers is their integrated graphics. These graphics share video memory with the main system RAM, so it limits the 3D gaming capability of these systems. Luckily, Dell lets you upgrade to a discrete graphics option for a bargain price. You can step up to ATI's Mobility Radeon X1300 video card with 128MB of dedicated memory for less than $50 or opt for their X1400 with double the video memory for about double the price. These aren't top-tier portable video card options, but they're much better than the integrated graphics. If you're going to want to game on your E1505 at all, it's a must-have upgrade.

There's a Firewire port and four USB 2.0 ports on these portable computers for hooking up high-speed peripherals. They don't ship with Bluetooth capabilities, although you can add an internal Bluetooth card for $20. Internet connectivity isn't a problem, as these portable computers ship with a modem, network interface, and 1390 802.11gWiFi.

Battery life with the default 6-cell battery averages around three hours--not great, but not bad for a multimedia portable computer. Dell offers an upgrade to a 9-cell battery for under $100 if you need a lengthier life before recharging.

Microsoft Works is the only office software the ships with these portable computers. Dell lets you upgrade to the Works Suite 2006 which includes Microsoft Word for around $79 or for around $149, you can step up to the Basic Edition of Microsoft Office that comes with Word, Excel, and Outlook.

Dell includes a one-year limited warranty on these portable computers, which features at-home service if it's needed. The one-year period has become the de facto standard for most PC vendors these days.

As they ship, the Dell Inspiron E1505 portable computers offer excellent core power and a good set of components. Gamers will want the graphics upgrade and video editors will want to step up the optical drive, but even if you do both, these portable computers still sell for well under a grand.

Pros: Great starting price, solid core power
Cons: Integrated graphics

Warranty
1-year limited