I’ve had my new Dell Studio XPS laptop for four days now, which is enough time to give a preliminary review. I’ve used it for work, written stories on it, and used a lot of its abilities.

First off, it’s a beautiful machine. Glossy black, with brushed metal and leather accents — yes, leather on a laptop. It’s just a strip on the top cover, but it’s cool. The 13.3″ screen is awesome; very clear, sharp and bright. It puts the screen on my lower-end HP dv4 to shame (yeah, I have a few laptops — more than a few, actually. The dark side of being a gadget geek.)

The keyboard is extremely solid, and backlit. That’s a significant bonus for me, as it means I can work in a dark room or area and still be productive.

With a Core 2 Duo processor, 8 GB of RAM (I need lots of it for my job), and a 500GB hard drive, the specs on the machine are top of the line. It has had no problem handling any of the tasks I’ve thrown at it so far, and I haven’t pushed the RAM or processor near its limits yet. Of course, you pay a premium for this kind of setup, but for me, it’s worth it. Programs open very quickly, and Web browsing is extremely fast (assuming a fast connection, which you can assume if it’s me we’re talking about).

I’ve come across one drawback so far: there’s only one USB port on the thing. It’s a pretty serious oversight, especially on a laptop, which generally needs a lot of USB ports. I’ve bought a 4-port USB hub (coming in a future review), but those can be unwieldy. It does have a 4-pin firewire port for transferring video to the hard drive. That can be a dicey proposition on some laptops, but not this one. It handled the video my kids and I shot without a hiccup.

The touchpad and mouse buttons are top-flight, sensitive and accurate. I also love the small form factor. The less-than-generous screen size for me isn’t a problem; when using it in my office, I simply plug it into my large monitor, which it handles well, thanks to a 256MB separate video card. I move around a lot with my laptop, and will be traveling with it often, so having something very portable works well for me.

Ultimately, buying a laptop is a very personal decision, and you should never buy more laptop than you need. For my needs, I need a lot of laptop. If that describes you, give the Dell Studio XPS a try. It’s a serious machine for serious productivity.