Intel Centrino Duo, by Dell

Dell also showed off their Inspiron E1705, their first and currently their only Centrino Duo based notebook. As the name implies, the notebook features a 17" widescreen display and an Intel Core Duo processor (single core versions will also be available). It is currently offered with either a T2500 (2.0GHz) or a T2400 (1.83GHz) Core Duo processor.

Although Dell is supposed to be shipping immediately, their online store doesn't have a preliminary ship date listed when you go to configure a machine.

Dell gave us a demo of the Inspiron E1705 with its new Dell MediaDirect 2.0 instant-on feature. Basically within 12 seconds of starting MediaDirect 2.0 you have full access (via a pre-OS environment) to any device connected to the notebook. That includes USB drives, media cards, the DVD drive and even the entire internal hard drive (as well as any external drives). With access to all of these devices you can view pictures, watch movies (any format that is supported by Windows Media Player) and listen to non-DRM protected music.

The MediaDirect 2.0 interface is very media center like and designed to minimize the amount of time needed to get your notebook up and running to a state where it can function as a portable media player.

We are expecting to have our review sample of the Inspiron E1705 in the next week or two.

Dell's Quad SLI , 4.26GHz, Dual Core XPS Renegade System Dell's Mobile Concept PC
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  • Aerows - Saturday, February 4, 2006 - link

    This design has a lot going for it. As one user suggested, kids going to college. BUT, I think that a strong argument could be made for it with small business owners.

    Why?

    Considering that I went through Hurricane Katrina, and literally everything (including both of my cars, my father's brand new Avalanche, both PC's) was underwater, the one thing that saved all of our records was my mother's laptop.

    No one expected it to be quite the monster that it was, and even though the PC's were put up high, and bagged, they were swamped. My mom's laptop of course, went home with her.

    Had we had two of these mobile PC's, I *guarantee* they would have been taken out of the building and away from the storm, and we wouldn't have to deal with waiting for insurance to settle, the inevitable depreciation involved (even though the two PC's involved in the storm were perfectly okay for our needs), and lost productivity. Backups are great and all, but let's face it, they are fallible and it can take a lot of effort to recover from two lost PCs.

    Personally, if these units were available in "value" flavors without the souped up video cards, I know several folks I would recommend them to right now.

    Of course, I'd want a decked out screamer for my own personal use :)! ::drool::


  • estbear - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    I think this is a verry intresting thing, but can it realy work like houres whit solar power. I mean thers almoust light everywhaer when this can work let's say 10 h I be impressed.

    Sry for bad englis :P
  • PeteRoy - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6020675.html">Watch the video
  • dev0lution - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    Funny that everyone thinks of dell for low price/cheap computers and now that profit margins have slowed they drop a 30" LCD for 2 grand that takes a "limited edition" overclocked (Overclocked by Dell...hell must be cold!) quad GPU XPS just to eke out playable framerates on the newest games. What's next?!?! Water cooling and AMD brought to you by the dell duuuude? =X
  • AnonymouseUser - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    Who'd a thunk it?
  • hoppa - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    Does the flaming skull graphic on the Dell machine automatically change to a rusty snail over the next 3 years?
  • ohnnyj - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    Very true. Plop down an estimated 10 grand on a system like this today and it will be outdated next year or even by the end of this year (there is no way nVidia will leave Quad SLI as a Dell exclusive). People will stick them in an overclocked FX-57 (perhaps watercooled) they build themselves and save themselves a few thousand dollars (and have a higher performing system to boot).
  • Griswold - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    We'll leave you today with a picture of Toshiba's HD-DVD player that was sitting in Intel's booth. The player crashed when we took this picture, but other than that there was nothing particularly interesting to see here.

    Aww poor DVD player is shy. Dont take pictures please! Move along, give this DVD player some breathing roomm!
  • yuchai - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    I don't think it's a good idea. I quote the article "Internally it's basically a notebook with discrete graphics and support for up to two 2.5" hard drives running in RAID."

    It offers nothing over a Desktop Replacement Laptop imo.
  • Nick5324 - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link

    I was thinking the same thing, however I think it has potential. Assuming it's priced competitively, and we could dump the discrete graphics, I'd be interested.

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