The Dell XPS M1730 Notebook is not quite back to school gear, unless money is really no object, and you don’t mind lugging a 10 pound plus notebook around.

The XPS M1730 is in the Desktop replacement category (7.5 pounds or more). This entertainment and gaming notebook is really well equipped, with an Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme X9000 processor running at 2.8GHz, which can be overclocked up to 3.4Ghz (this is according to Dell), 2GB RAM (upgradeable to 4GB), a choice of hard drives: a 400 GB RAID (2 x 200GB) 7200 rpm drive or a 128GB Solid State Drive. The screen is a 17 inch 1920 by 1200 pixel resolution active matrix display with a NVIDIA GeForce 8700MGT PCI Express x16 graphics card with 512MB of graphics memory (these are actually a dual graphics cards in a scalable link interface).

A 2 megapixel webcam with digital microphones is integrated above the screen for those important video conferences, or in-game chats. Keyboard illumination can be turned on for gaming in the dark.

Another great feature is Dell’s MediaDirect software, which allows you to play CDs and DVDs without booting the system.

There is also an optional Blu-Ray disc drive, with a choice of either a reader or a burner.

Posted on July 30th, 2008 by mervyn