Dell Inspiron 17″
Dell’s 17 inch Inspiron follows on with Dell’s new line of colourful laptops. And for a 17 inch laptop, it’s surprisingly cheap with a starting price of just £349. As a minimum it includes a 160 GB hard-drive, 2 GB of RAM and a 1.8 GHz Intel Celeron dual core processor. To future proof your Inspiron it’s probably worth upgrading to a faster processor – an extra £50 will get you a much slicker 2.1 GHz Intel Pentium dual core and, as a bonus, bumps you up to 3 GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard-drive. It could easily be the best £50 you’ll spend all year.
The 17 inch Inspiron’s display is mammoth, as you’d expect, and is crystal clear with rich, vibrant colours when the brightness is on full blast. Speaking of it’s large display size, it’s important to mention this laptop isn’t really a laptop – it’s a desktop replacement. Having this on your lap will start to take it’s toll after a while, and it’s not the ideal computer to take with you. Having said that, no 17 inch laptop is ever designed to be taken with you – it’s best for those looking for all the power of a desktop computer with all the benefits of being able to fold it up and hide it away.
The Inspiron 17 inch is an excellent family computer, brilliant for work and not-too-shabby for gaming (although if you’re after a serious gaming laptop of a similar size, you might want to consider Alienware’s delicious M17x). The Inspiron 17 is an incredibly versatile laptop which you can custom build with ease (want a better graphics card? No problem – you can add that to your order). If you’re after a reliable, hard-working desktop replacement, Dell’s Inspiron 17 might be the machine for you.
