"The name's Storm...Storm Grey."

Even the colors of the new Inspiron 8000 notebook sound like a movie line.

That's appropriate given all the multimedia ins and outs on this 600 MHz notebook. For starters, the Inspiron can drink raw digital video straight from a FireWire (IEEE 1394) hose, edit it into shape using included Dell Movie Studio software, and then spit out a finished masterpiece directly as pristine S-Video.

If you are feeling less creative, you can always kick back and play the latest Bond flick on the optional 8x DVD player and enjoy the sound provided by the included Harman/Kardon designed audio components and speakers. Or, you can pipe digital audio straight into your home theater system.

A particularly nice feature is the 2nd modular bay that lets you plug in an additional CD-RW or Zip drive. Other standout features include a 14.1" SXGA+ LCD display driven by a high- powered 32MB 4X AGP Mobility M4 chip set from ATI and optional color palm rest inserts.

Features:

- Starts at $1,899
- 600-MHz Intel Mobile Celeron
- 64 MB of SDRAM
- 14.1-inch SXGA+
- 4X AGP ATI Mobility M4 (32 MB video RAM)
- 5 GB1 hard disk (up to 32GB)
- 24X CD-ROM, 8X CD-RW or 8X DVD
- S-Video, composite video out
- Harman/Kardon audio
- 56K V.90 modem and 10/100 Ethernet communications
- IEEE 1394 port (FireWire, digital video)
- digital audio out ports
- optional palm rest inserts:
  Tahoe Blue, Storm Grey,
  Golden Yellow and Royal Purple
- 2nd modular bay for floppy, zip, CD, hard disk, Zip

Copyright © 2006 Stephen Jones All rights reserved.