Dell XPS 1530

We've fallen in love with the little Dell review notebook from this roundup. It arrived stock with Vista Business installed but even that did little to dampen our enthusiasm about the little red wonder.

Part of Dell's XPS range and more of a mid-range notebook than anything else, the test scores were sufficiently impressive to be almost shocking. Sweeping the board with SuperPi, the first place seems fitting for the Ferrari-red unit.

While it only placed second in the 3Dmark run, it still posted a decent score for a laptop that is apparently designed more for business than gaming. What was of note was a random test of the 1530's on-the-fly network device switching which was unplanned and would have slipped by if not for a power failure. The Dell picked up a stray signal from a nearby Wi-Fi hotspot and started installing updates while everyone else was cursing the delay to this month’s articles.

From the blinding boot speed through to the durable, if plain, laptop bag, there is very little that this XPS has left out. There are three integrated USB's, HDMI inputs, Firewire and a memory card reader arrayed around the chassis. The 2.0 megapixel webcam and mics are perfect for those on-the-go meetings and for a little added security; a biometric scanner has been thrown in to keep those logins a bit tighter. The fact that there is less lag booting into Vista Business on this machine than on our desktop PCs with XP is also a huge selling point.

Bluetooth has not been left out in the cold and there are a couple of optional extras if you're willing to spend the money on them. A TV tuner card, Blu Ray drive or solid state drives are just a few such titbits. Shelling out for some of these can push your notebook in one direction or the other, from business extension to multimedia powerhouse to gaming rig. The choices are there.

The only gripe we've got with the 1530 is the battery life and the DVD drive. The battery life is always a problem on a notebook and turning down the resource usage does extend uptime considerably but it won't function as well. Looking at the slot-loading drive; it fits the aesthetic for the XPS extremely well but somehow we just prefer the stability of a tray-loading drive when using a portable machine.

Make no mistake; the Dell XPS 1530 is seemingly all about business. But it functions equally well as a multimedia or portable gaming rig. It may not run Crysis but you've got no business running that on a notebook at work anyway.