Digital Home Thoughts: Dell Introduces 'Studio' Line of Notebooks

"Dell’s all new Studio 15 is a consumer grade notebook that fits somewhere between the Dell Inspiron and Dell XPS series. The Dell Studio 15 borrows design elements from the XPS series, but is much more affordable than the XPS M1530. The Dell Studio 15 is available now from Dell.com for $799 and up, and will be available at Staples and Best Buy by the first week of July. The Dell Studio is available with a choice of 11 colors and designs. One premium feature that stands out on the Dell Studio 15 is its backlit keyboard. Backlit keyboards are usually found on much more expensive notebooks, such as the Alienware m15x, Envy 133 and MacBook Pro."



I built a ruby red Studio 15 with Core 2 Duo CPU at 2 Ghz, Windows Vista SP1, a 1440 x 900 resolution display, a 256 MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 graphics card, 3 GB of RAM, a 200 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, an 8x DVD burner, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2.0 megapixel Webcam, a 6-cell battery, fingerprint reader, and a back-lit keyboard...all for $1344 USD. Not bad at all - especially when I consider I paid nearly double that for my XPS M1330 about a year ago and the specs are very similar to what I have. I noticed Dell finally added the actual resolution of the screens, not simply tossing out "WXGA" and expecting people to know what that means. They still don't have photos of what each battery option looks like on the laptop - my suggestion of doing so seems to have gathered decent support over at Dell IdeaStorm. It's too bad they don't have a 14" option - the Studio 15 is north of six pounds, which is pretty hefty.

I wish HP would get on the colour bandwagon, because they make some excellent laptops but don't go the extra mile when it comes to adding colour - I really enjoy my red XPS laptop, and I think colour really is a differentiating feature that matters for some people (I'm one of them).