Dell isn’t a manufacturer readily associated with cutting-edge kit. Dependable? Yes. Affordable? Sure. But cutting edge? Not obviously, at least not beyond its manufacturing facilities. Such thinking is about to be turned on its head though, as the Dell Inspiron XPS is quite possibly the most advanced and powerful laptop to ever makes it way through the PC Plus labs.

First impressions are mixed. The large 17in widescreen display lends itself to a sizeable footprint, and it isn’t the thinnest notebook either. This creates an image that is similar to the Clevo chassis used by the likes of Mesh and AJP for their Pentium 4 desktop replacements, although it isn’t quite as bulky as those systems.

The positive side to using a chassis this large, apart from the size of the screen of course, is the amount of space available to components. Dell has used this space to build on the standard notebook cooling mechanism, which has meant that the fastest components can be used. You will, for example, find the fastest spin of the Pentium M in this machine, running at a cool 2.13GHz. This chip operates on a 533MHz front side bus, and is joined by an impressive 1GB of fast DDR2 533MHz RAM. A 100GB hard drive should provide ample space for work, while the inclusion of an 8x DVD±RW means that shifting around data, in its various forms, isn’t too difficult either.

This core is powerful and versatile, but the real highlight of the machine is the graphics subsystem. Notebooks have been catching up with desktops for some time now, and the Inspiron XPS takes this to its logical conclusion, and actually manages to surpass most desktop solutions.

Dell has exclusive use of the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra in this machine, and if you’ve got any designs on gaming, prepare to be blown away by the capabilities of this mobile-centric core. Clocked at 450MHz, the 12 pixel-pipeline and 5 vertex shader engine of Nvidia’s premium chip is significantly faster (150MHz no less) than the straight GeForce Go 6800. This equates to a staggering performance boost, with figures that are comparable to high-end desktops based around ATi’s X850 XT and NVIDIA’s desktop rendition of the GeForce 6800 Ultra.

A graphics powerhouse
In terms of performance, you’re looking at smooth rendering with access to all the effects and options that you could hope for. The likes of Doom 3 will happily throw around over 60fps at the highest supported resolution of 1,600x1,200, although the lack of a widescreen resolution does defeat the point a little. 3DMark 2003 and 2005 show the raw power on offer though, with scores of 11,928 and 5,079 – impressive stuff, and ridiculously so for a notebook. Such high performance isn’t limited to just graphics-centric loads either, the MobileMark 2002 index of 235 is remarkable and one of the fastest results we’ve ever seen.

Despite the sheer scale of the Inspiron XPS, this is a desktop replacement that actually does a good job of providing enough stamina to keep going while you are on the road (or more probably on rails). We’ve come to expect negligible battery lives from these 17in monsters, but this actually manages a respectable two hours and five minutes from a full charge with the screen at full brightness. Admittedly, this is hardly troubling ultra portables out there, but it’s very impressive for a machine of this size and power.

Minor flaws
If this all seems a bit glowing, then we’d unapologetically say that this is because its one of the most powerful notebooks we’ve ever seen. It isn’t without its problems though. The native resolution of 1,920x1,200 is something of a double-edged sword. Those editing images and designing in general will welcome the desktop space, but for normal work this screen is a little too small for such a high resolution. While there are workarounds for the ridiculously small text sizes, a more sensible resolution of 1,680x1,050 would have been a better solution.

The single lamp screen suffers from distracting reflections in brightly lit areas, although the X-Black style sheen does render films and games beautifully in the right setting. The fact that the Inspiron XPS weighs less than 4Kg works in its favour, particularly when most 17in desktop replacements weigh closer to 6Kg. This, coupled with the ridiculously strong performance and great overall specification make it a power user’s dream. It’s a shame it’s so expensive really.