Dell Studio XPS 16 Laptop Computer (Intel Core 2 Duo T6600, 250GB HDD, 3GB)

Pros: Stylish Good Looks and intelegant back-lit keyboard with good action. Fast processing better than average sound and bright high res display. Good build quality and better than average power supply, not forgetting Dells excellent after sales service.

Cons: Runs very hot with average battery life. Touchpad can be quirky, but it may just be my touch? No win Nova driver for win 7 !

Summary: After previously owning an Acer and Advent laptops I found they lacked the processing power and memory I needed for photoshop and other apps. So I found the Dell studio xps offered a fast intel centrino P8600, 2.53 Ghz processor and 4GB of DDR3 memory. With this specification I bought the studio xps with win7 upgrade inc.

The laptop arrived some 3 weeks later, (very slow in this respect), well packaged in a tough plain plastic case. After setting up and switching on Win vista installed taking about 30 min. After installing updates etc I loaded photoshop and my other software, and I specially like the back-lit keyboard as I will be using outdoors at night in my observatory. I found the performance was very good, faster than my Desktop running a 2.4 Mhz Core 2 processor and 3GB DDR2. The Laptop performs very well overall and I am pleased with it's performance but on the downside the unit runs quite hot and the battery life is just average.

After a few weeks the display was went faulty, and after eventually finding the correct phone number on Dells web site and talking with their rep an engineer was sent out the very next day and a new display was fitted. Brilliant service and I must complement Dell 100% on this.