Dell's Gaming Monster

Carpoolio writes "TechTV has a good first look at the new Dell Inspiron XPS -- the company's first foray into portable gaming systems. The notebook -- a beast at 9 pounds -- puts the company squarely against the likes of Alienware. The price tag is steep, too, at $3,350. Are you buying?"

Comments

Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember back when that would've been a super lightweight notebook.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

serious gamer

Isn't this an oxymoron, you know like, "work party", "pretty ugly", or "microsoft works"?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[badasscat]

Or you could buy a first-gen 17" Powerbook for about $2500, spend $100 and upgrade it to a gig of ram, and ignore the screen resolution since there isn't a mobile graphics card on the planet that can drive a display for a first-person shooter at either system's native resolution anyway.

(spit-take)

What what what??! You really have no idea what level of technology the rest of the world is actually using.

A mobile Radeon 9700 is more than powerful enough to play any fps at the native resolution of this laptop. I have a brand new laptop with a 2.4ghz non-Extreme P4 and the same res. screen as the XPS and I can play UT2K3 and Max Payne 2 at native resolution at around 60fps with a Radeon 9000. So your statement is clearly ignorant, and false.

There's nothing wrong with buying a 17" Powerbook if that's what you want, but you're fundamentally misunderstanding the market for the Dell XPS if that's what you'd think that audience would want. Mac people always say "or just buy a Mac" for pretty much every situation, as if their machines work best for everything. The simple fact is the XPS would be a far better gaming machine than a 17" Powerbook - it has a faster CPU and it has a faster graphics card (and it's upgradeable). The PC market is a specialized market, with a lot of different machines for different purposes. The whole point of a gaming laptop is to have a laptop that's good for playing games, not to have a laptop that's a catch-all device with gaming as merely one of the possible functions. This is not a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none... this is a master of one trade, and that's it.

That said, I wouldn't buy an XPS myself. It's fugly, for one thing. And heavy, and unnecessarily expensive. When I can play games like those I listed above at good frame rates at native res. on my $1,200 widescreen laptop that doesn't weight 9 pounds and also looks better than the XPS, what the heck am I spending $5,000 on? Which is not to say I think these things are silly for everyone, I am just not their target market. I do have a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none machine. If I really had some extra cash to waste, I'd at least go for something like this or even this. At least they're somewhat portable and don't look like they were designed in 1989.

9 pounds?!

[Anonymous Coward]

At nine pounds thats the cheapest machine I've seen in ages - or are we not all talking British?

It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[jeblucas]

Marty! This thing must take One-point-twenty-one-Giga-watts!

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[wickedj]

Now all they need to do is attach an ethanol reactor to it, that or a MR.FUSION.

Would I buy it?

[heironymouscoward]

No. For entertainment, give me a cube PC and a projector. Just as portable, ten times the fun and cheaper.

Re:Would I buy it?

[morcheeba]

tell that to the bald guy in the airplane seat ahead of you while you project Quake on the back of his head. Oh wait, you're right -- it is ten times the fun!

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

is $3350 cheaper than the $1599, $1999, or $2999 powerbook? Or the $1099 iBook G4? Oh yeah, I forgot it comes with a pentium, so I guess it's cheaper than all of them.

Size _doesn't_ matter.

[normal_guy]

When pricing laptops, the executive types always pick the smallest size. You wouldn't believe the amount of thought that went into extra power vs. 8 extra OUNCES. The younger game-playing employees always price out the laptops with the most power, knowing that an extra few pounds means _nothing_ when you're rolling it down the concourse. To me, it's all about desktop replacement.

ouchy

[cubyrop]

at that price point it had better come with a firewire vagina.

Re:ouchy

[DirtyJ]

firewire vagina

As long as it isn't scsi, I guess it would be ok.

Mmm....

[foxtrot]

WUXGA+ screen, which is 1920x1200 pixels.

What I want to know is, why is it you can buy a laptop with that flat panel installed, but you can't buy an LCD monitor for your desktop PC that can do that?

-JDF

it's under 3 grand

[cubyrop]

i can't seem to find where poster got the 3,300 price tag. From dell.com:

New Inspiron XPS Starting at $2599 After $250 Mail-in Rebate
Pentium(R)4 w/HT Technology 3.4GHz,15.4 WUXGA
512MB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
60GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA Hard Drive
4X CD/DVD burner(DVD+RW/+R) including Sonic RecordNow and MyDVD LE
$2,849

2600 bucks is actually fairly well inline, and a huge difference from 3,300 in the makes-the-eyeballs-bulge dep't.

Re:it's under 3 grand

[stratjakt]

The system tested in the TechTV article was 3350, it had 1 gig of RAM and the optional battery/subwoofer addon, and some other bells and whistles.

Also, after note the "after $250 mail-in rebate", which I dont think TechTV included - they reported the actual out-of-pocket cost.

Re:Ouch

[WankersRevenge]

just remember, unlike gta3 - you stay in jail after being arrested for running down pedestrians.

Re:Im NOT buying

[Alan Shutko]

If you don't pay for disposable technology, what computer do you buy? They're all worthless after a while. Sure, you can keep replacing components, but after a while, you've replaced everything anyway. What's the difference?

I've had my laptop for over three years now, and plan on getting at least another year out of it. And it means that I can do stuff anywhere in my 3-story house I want to. I can bring it on the road to get programming in when my wife is driving. I can watch DVDs in hotel rooms. It's got a lot of uses, but the fact that I'm not tied to a specific location at home is the reason I have it.

(Now, I wouldn't buy this laptop... Inspirons have low build quality, and I don't want a 9 lb luggable. But that's no indictment against other laptops.)

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[trentblase]

Hey, there are plenty of great games for the Mac! Breakout, superbreakout.... photoshop.

It's pronounced SCUZZY

[vasqzr]

It better not be ultra-wide, either

Re:No, it's too much

[Rude Turnip]

You can upgrade the graphics chipset on Dell laptops.