Dell XPS M2010

When Dell unveiled the XPS M2010 laptop concept at CES 2006, few expected it to reach the retail market. The 20-inch laptop was more audacious than anything we'd seen previously and the general consensus was that its enormous size made it too much of a freak to be taken seriously. Kudos to Dell, then, for throwing caution to the wind and bringing it to market. But is this a case of boldness before greatness, or has the world's biggest PC manufacturer got more money than sense?
 

Design
The XPS M2010 looks like no laptop before it. With the lid closed it resembles a large briefcase complete with a sturdy, leather-bound handle with silver support struts that extend halfway down the lid and base. The grip of the handle has a circular Dell logo at each end, and there's another glowing Dell logo to be found towards the top of the lid. The laptop's industrial-looking graphite colour is certainly different, but some users may prefer a more conventional black finish.

Unlike smaller XPS laptops, the M2010 uses latches to keep the lid shut when not in use. These are situated on either side of the lid. Unfortunately they feel a tad flimsy and we wouldn't be surprised if they begin to fail after extended use. The base of the laptop is smoother than most, including that of the 12-inch XPS M1210. Aside from a latch for removing the battery, a single air vent and a circular subwoofer port, there's little else to be found.

With the screen open, the XPS looks far more stylish. The 20-inch screen is the most imposing we've seen on any laptop, and the fact that the top of the screen sits close to eye level means you won't have to hunch over the laptop. This is great for your posture -- the XPS M2010 felt extremely comfortable to use during long periods. Impressively, the flexible screen hinge means the screen is height and rake adjustable so you can raise, lower and bring it closer to you for optimum comfort.


The base section of the XPS M2010 is home to its power button, which is positioned to the far right-hand side. To the left of this is a Windows Media Center 'home' button, and to the far left a set of indicator lights that show the laptop's Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, hard disk and power status. The M2010 uses the most unusual optical drive we've seen on any laptop. It's a top-loading model with two transparent glass panels that let you see the CD spinning inside the unit





The keyboard section of the XPS M2010 is completely removable. It can be lifted away from the base section and, being a Bluetooth unit, it can be used from up to 10m away from the laptop. The keyboard has an integrated mouse touchpad and buttons that give you full control of the M2010, and there's also a dedicated numerical keypad featured. To the far right of the keyboard is a set of shortcut keys that give you quick access to common multimedia tasks such as play, pause, rewind, fast forward and volume control.


Features
We'd expect any laptop of this size to have a strong specification, and M2010 doesn't disappoint. It uses a fast Intel Centrino Duo T2600 processor running at 2.16GHz. This isn't as fast as the latest 2.3GHz T2700 model, but its dual-core architecture means it's quick enough to give most desktop PCs a run for their money and it's capable of handling everything from everyday Internet surfing to more strenuous video-editing tasks. The basic model comes with 2GB of DDR3 667MHz RAM, which is an ample amount for just about every type of home or business user.

Its graphics capabilities are solid, too. It uses an ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 graphics card -- ATI's most advanced graphics processor and the fastest we've seen in any laptop. Its presence gives the XPS M2010 the ability to run the latest games, including the likes of Prey and Half-Life 2: Episode 1, at high resolutions with good image quality and consistent frame rates.

The XPS M2010's audio capabilities are admirable. There are four speakers on either side of the lower portion of the screen, and a subwoofer on the underside of the laptop. Unlike most laptops, even those with subwoofers, this setup sounds rather good, but serious audiophiles will want to connect a set of external surround-sound speakers.

There's plenty of space to store files on the XPS M2010. Dell has supplied a pair of 100GB hard drives configured in a RAID 0 array for a total of 200GB of storage. That's enough to hoard over 190 hours of high-definition movie content, or over 51,000 average-sized MP3 audio files.

Accessing multimedia content is a breeze with the M2010 as it uses the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system. It also comes with a customised remote control that lets you control the device from the comfort of your armchair. Commendably, Dell has opted for a remote that has an integrated LCD screen, and this can be used to select songs or tracklists in your music library without going anywhere near the laptop.

Arguably more impressive is the remote's gyroscopic ability -- it lets you move the mouse cursor around the screen simply by waving it at the laptop.

Being an XPS product, the M2010 comes with one a one-year next business day on-site warranty, plus free online and telephone technical support. XPS customers are given a special phone number which expedites their calls to agents ahead of standard customers, so there's potentially less time spent waiting on the phone.

Performance
Unsurprisingly the XPS M2010 offers strong performance in most aspects. Its 2.1GHz processor helped it achieve a solid PC Mark 2005 score of 4,122, which was in line with our expectations.

The XPS M2010 gave us the rather pleasant surprise of operating in a very quiet and composed manner during our test period. It runs extremely quietly during everyday use and its cooling fans only piped up when we subjected it to more strenuous activities, such as video encoding or game playing.

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MacBook Pro (aluminium 2008 edition)

The MacBook Pro -- for so long the final word in high-end multimedia laptops -- is back. It now sports a new aluminium chassis and twin graphics cards, and promises significantly better performance than its predecessors. Prices for the entry-level machine start at £1,399, while the slightly faster model retails for £1,749.

Design

Our first impression of the MacBook Pro, apart from noticing how pretty it is, was that it seems more solid than the vast majority of laptops -- its predecessor included. That's because it uses a new 'unibody' enclosure forged from a single piece of aluminium. This pretty much eliminates the flexing you get in laptops built from multiple panels and gives the Pro an almost indestructible feel.
Despite the use of metal, the MacBook Pro is relatively thin and light. Both new 15.4-inch models tip the scales at just 2.49 kilos and measure 364mm by 249mm by 25mm. That's just 450g heavier than the 13.3-inch standard MacBook.
As ever, all the MacBook Pro's ports are positioned on the left side in a logical arrangement. Going from left to right, you'll find a Magsafe power AC connector, which allows easier and safer connection of the power source. Next to that there's a Gigabit Ethernet port, FireWire 800, two USB ports, a MiniDisplayPort connector, audio in and out, ExpressCard/34 and a side-mounted battery indicator light.
It all sounds pretty straightforward in principle, but it isn't. Our main gripe is that the Mini DisplayPort is such an unusual -- and largely unsupported -- connector. We can't think of a many monitors that directly support it, even those made by Apple. Those who wish to connect the laptop to an external display of up to 24 inches in size will need to spend an extra £20 in the Apple store on a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adaptor. Those who want to go larger will need to buy an adaptor costing £69.
While we're complaining, we should also mention that the MacBook Pro also lacks many of the features we take for granted on ordinary desktop replacement laptops. There's no memory card reader, it has fewer USB ports than a netbook, there's no dedicated numerical keypad, no hardware wireless switch to turn the Wi-Fi off in a hurry, no status LEDs and no emergency power-fail disc eject feature.
On the surface, it's really rather basic, but there are also touches you won't get on a Windows-based laptop The keyboard is backlit, which makes it easy to use in the dark; the enormous mouse trackpad has a silky, smooth feel to it and supports gesture inputs, which can make it easier to navigate. Our only gripe is that it has no buttons -- instead, the entire trackpad can be depressed and used as a selector. You'll almost certainly grow to hate it when you're dragging and dropping files and find your finger has reached the edge of the trackpad, but the cursor is still some way from where you want it to be. Lifting your finger means releasing the button and cancelling the drag and drop operating.

Features

There are three versions of the MacBook Pro on offer -- a 17-inch model that uses the old chassis and two new aluminium 'unibody' versions. The entry-level 15.4-inch version uses a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM and has a 250GB hard drive -- all for a rather pricey £1,399. The high-end 15.4-inch model gets a slightly faster 2.54GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, although you'll have to pay a whopping £1,749 for the privilege.
The graphics adaptors in the two new MacBooks bring the most surprises. Instead of just a single card, they now come with two. The first is an Nvidia GeForce 9400M card that's integrated on the MacBook Pro's Nvidia chipset. That's paired with a more potent Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT card, which on the entry-level machine has 256MB of dedicated memory, and on the top-end model, 512MB of dedicated memory.
Visit the settings menu in the operating system and you'll see two power options: high performance or longer battery life. Selecting high performance switches the 9600M GT card on, while selecting longer battery life turns it off. Annoyingly, switching between modes requires you to log out and log back in again, which involves closing applications and saving any open files.

Like the standard MacBooks, the new Pros can be customised at the time of purchase. Using the entry-level MacBook as an example, you can add up to 4GB of RAM (£100), a 7,200RPM 320GB drive (£105), or a 128GB solid state drive (£420). Software includes Time Machine for creating backups, Mail, iChat, the Safari browser, Photo Booth, Front Row, Boot Camp (for installing Windows XP in addition to OS X), and the iLife '08 suite.

Performance

The MacBook Pro has always been a strong performer, and a long-time favourite of video editing professionals. If you fit that bracket, you'll be pleased to learn the new models are, on the whole, just as quick as those that came before it.
The 2.53GHz MacBook Pro completed our multimedia multitasking test in 402 seconds. That's around 67 seconds quicker than the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro from the previous generation, and 29 seconds quicker than the current generation MacBook we reviewed recently.
Graphics performance was solid, too. With the single GeForce 9400M card enabled, it ran Quake IV at 55.7 frames per second. With the two running in tandem, this jumped to 84.9 frames per second. Don't get too excited, though: we hardly noticed any difference in desktop graphics applications when running the two cards simultaneously.
With the two cards enabled, the MacBook Pro lasted 3 hours and 16 minutes in our video playback test, which isn't bad for a laptop of this size. With just the integrated 9400M enabled, it lasted a more impressive 4 hours and 5 minutes. That's not quite the 5 hours claimed by Apple, but it's impressive nonetheless.

Conclusion

The MacBook Pro is an excellent laptop, but we find it difficult to recommend. It's great in its own right, but it offers relatively little in comparison to the standard MacBook, except perhaps in gaming terms. If you can afford it and can live with its numerous foibles, it'll be fine, but given the price, our money's with its little brother.

Advent 6441

Once hideously expensive, Blu-ray drives have now come down in price, and, as Advent demonstrates with the 6441, you can pick one up in a laptop for under £500.
The 6441 also comes furnished with a large, 17-inch display and full Qwerty keyboard. But has Advent skimped on quality to achieve the low price?

Design

The glossy lid and its contoured lines certainly make a good first impression -- but it doesn't last long. Open the 6441 up and you're greeted with a plastic chassis that both looks and feels cheap.
The keyboard and numeric keypad have flat keys with very little spacing, which makes typing more difficult than it should be, given the amount of room Advent had to play with. The keys are also of a very poor quality, wobbling when pressed, and we're not sold on the layout -- the delete key is stuck in between the insert and page-up keys, while the function key sits where the left Ctrl key should be. Worse still, it's far too easy, when typing, to bash your thumbs against the ridge next to the space bar.
We were also left unimpressed with the trackpad buttons, which you have to depress with far too much force to activate. The fact that there's no scroll section on the trackpad is nothing less than bewildering.
On the plus side, the 17-inch screen is reasonably bright, but only if you look at it straight on. Despite the glossy coating, colours looked a little washed-out.
There's no FireWire, but you do get a multi-format card reader, 54mm ExpressCard slot and three USB ports. Two of the USB ports are sat on the left, while the third is at the rear and doubles up as an eSATA port -- useful if you want to expand on the 160GB hard drive.

Features

Despite costing under £500, Advent has managed to find room in the budget for a Blu-ray drive. As expected, it's read-only (although it can write DVDs and CDs).

The DVI output at the rear is HDCP-compatible, so you can use it to pump protected HD movies to a TV (assuming it also has an HDCP-compatible DVI port). For some reason, though, Advent opted not to include an HDMI output. There is, however, a digital S/PDIF audio output, so you can divert sound away from the rather tinny built-in speakers to your monster surround-sound system.
Powering the 6441 is an Intel Pentium dual-core T3200 processor running at 2GHz. Compared to Core 2 CPUs, it's a little lethargic and won't be up to much more than basic tasks. A total of 4GB RAM is installed but, as always, the 32-bit Vista Home Premium means you'll only get to use 3GB of this.
Graphics are taken care of by Intel's integrated GMA 4500MHD chip, which will be enough to persuade gamers to look elsewhere.

Performance

Given the relatively slow processor and graphics, it should come as no surprise that the 6441 struggled in both the PCMark05 and 3DMark06 benchmarks, returning scores of 3,926 and 796 respectively. So, while older games at low resolutions will just about be playable, you can cast aside any thoughts of playing modern 3D titles.
Although battery life isn't hugely important with a desktop replacement such as this, we were hoping for more than 48 minutes in Battery Eater's Classic test and just over two hours in the less-demanding Reader's test.

Conclusion

Advent has clearly gone all out to sell a Blu-ray laptop for as little as possible. Although it's commendable that the price tag is under £500, the keyboard and trackpad are woeful. You could always attach an external keyboard and mouse, but that rather defeats the point of a desktop replacement.
Ultimately, you're better off buying a stand-alone Blu-ray player for your TV and opting for the cheaper HP Compaq Presario CQ70-116, which has similar specs but no Blu-ray drive.