High-performance notebook comes with all the bells and whistles

Dell's Inspiron line is designed for those who are unwilling to sacrifice high performance and storage capacity in their laptops even if they have to pay a bit more to have everything in one box.

As a result, the Inspiron 3700, Dell's second-lightest notebook, weighs in at 2.9 kilograms, which is not as light as some other notebooks in the same class, but is big on features and power.

The notebook comes in two colours - Tahoe Blue, a cross between denim and blueberry, and Storm Grey, a light grey.

Those who think notebook computers should come in metal casings and in colours such as black or steel grey may need time to get used to the notebook's delicate-looking plastic casing and colour scheme.

But the Inspiron 3700 is a sturdy computer, inside and out. It is powered by either a Pentium III or an Intel Celeron - the former available at up to 500 MHz and the latter up to 466 MHz.

Memory is upgradable to 521 MB of SDRam in two slots. The hard drive comes with 6 gb, 12 gb or 18 gb of storage space and can be expanded to 36 gb with a second drive. It is hard to imagine why anyone would need 36 gb of storage space as 6 gb is more than enough to store several years of files unless the user is a heavy-duty gamer or a fan of similar memory-hogging software.

Two bays at the front of the case hold any combination of a 1.5-inch floppy disk drive, CD-Rom, DVD, second battery or second drive.