Dell beefs up media capabilities of Inspiron notebooks
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
Dell launched the Inspiron 8600 in the U.S. Thursday, improving the multimedia capabilities of its major consumer notebook line. The new notebook comes with a 15.4-inch display, good for watching DVDs or Internet media content, and several choices of graphics processors from both ATI Technologies and Nvidia.
Intel Corp.'s Pentium M processor improves the battery life of the new Inspiron over the older Inspiron 8500, which used a Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M processor. The Pentium M, introduced in March, has demonstrated longer battery life and increased performance over the older Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M processors in several reviews.
A base configuration costs $1,699 with a 1.3GHz Pentium M, 512MB of PC2700 (333MHz) DDR (double data rate) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM), a 40GB hard drive, the ATI graphics card, and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. A version of the notebook was launched in Europe on Aug. 18, a Dell spokesman said.