Dell launches new notebook, desktop

By Keith Shaw on Thu, 10/27/05 - 3:07pm.

Dell laptop As we get closer to the holiday shopping season, expect to see more and more consumer desktop and notebook announcements.

Dell starts us off with a new 14.1-inch widescreen notebook (the XPS M140) and an entry-level Media Center PC (the Dimension E310). The XPS M140 starts at $999 and is expected to ship in November; the E310 starts at $599 and is now available.

The XPS M140 is the second notebook in the XPS line, and includes features like a full-size keyboard, nine-cell battery, 5-in-1 media card reader and Dell's TrueLife technology for viewing movies at the same playback size as a 15-inch standard-aspect display. The 5.5-pound notebook also includes the Dell MediaDirect button, which lets users access music, photos and movies in seconds without waiting for the OS to boot up. The MediaDirect button also lets users manage content from flash memory cards and USB storage keys.

Other features include Intel Pentium M processors (up to 2.13 GHz), Intel Graphics media Accelerator card (GMA900), integrated internal Wi-Fi (802.11b or 802.11b/g), up to 2G-bytes of memory, up to an 80G-byte hard drive, and choice of optical drives.

The Dimension E310 will support a DVD burner drive, an all-in-one media card reader and has new audio-enhancing software that aims to improve the sound of users' digital music, Dell says. The new chassis can store up to 160G-bytes of storage, and is also designed to lower noise, the company adds.

The base configuration of the E310 includes an Intel Pentium 4 processor 521, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, 256M-bytes of memory, 80G-byte hard drive, a 16x-speed DVD/CD-RW drive, 17-inch CRT monitor and one-year limited warranty.

More details and specs available at the XPS or Dimension Web sites.