Price: from $1899 ($2250 as tested)

Availability: Out Now

There are currently three divisions of notebooks, the Heavyweights, with their ten pound weight, 15 inch Super XGA screens, onboard DVD, floppy et .al fully inclusive. Next come the middleweights that come in around 7 pounds with similar specs to the heavy weights but with less of the fat (i.e. without a floppy or extra drive bay for a battery and a smaller screen). And finally, the ultra-lite, ultra-thin and truly "mobile" liteweights, with their 10-12 inch screens and 3-4 pound weights.

PDAs are getting smaller; cell phones are getting smaller and now finally so are DELL notebooks. DELL has for some time been making powerful notebooks that weigh in evenly matched to any super heavy weight boxer of the modern era (take your pick although we will admit that Lennox Lewis is probably a little podgier these days). In other words, DELL has long been in the market focusing much of their business upon the strategy known as "desktop replacement". The Inspiron 8000 line is currently continuing this trend but on the flip side and rather unusual for DELL, the company is today releasing a laptop closer in size, shape and dimensions to a featherweight boxer (Prince Naseem Hamed if you like). Enter the DELL Inspiron 2100, which enters the scales at only 3.4 pounds and only an inch thick, surely something to boast about, which hasn't always been the case when it comes to inches and laptops.

Size isn't everything and although it has taken DELL longer than the likes of IBM, Fujitsu and Sony to realize this fact, the DELL 2100 with an Intel Pentium III 700MHz driving it, is certainly ready to take on the rest of the featherweight division.