The true defining differences between notebooks come in the details. The Inspiron 8000 has mixed success in this area. First, the bad: Its mixture of a swoopy curved bottom and an angular lid design make the 8000e look like a Frankenstein abomination. Blech! The SVHS video port is located far from the audio and FireWire ports, which does not make sense if you need to hook the notebook up to a TV with audio. The SVHS port should be alongside the other ports. The audio and CD controls don't work without special software, which you will lose if you have to reformat. The DVD is not removable, which not only raises the minimum weight of the machine, it does not give you flexibility in changing drives. The machine is far, far too heavy to carry around on a daily basis. If you need to be highly mobile, this is not the notebook for you. Then there is the largest flaw of all, which we already mentioned, the release switches for the battery and drive bay are on the bottom of the case, making it difficult to remove the modules without turning the machine on its side or top.

Now the good: The touchpad is excellent, and includes great support software. For those who like the pointer control, there is one in the center of the keyboard. The keyboard feels great, though we still yearn for full-size key travel. There is a full-size inverted T for the arrow keys in the lower right, which are very useful and we think are a must on all notebooks. All the normal keys are in their proper positions and the spacing is excellent. The only odd part of the layout is that the pageup, pagedown and other extended keys are located in a row above the F-keys on the right hand of the keyboard. Since these keys are not used constantly, we think this was a good sacrifice to make in order to keep the often-used keys in their proper positions.

The audio from the Dell Inspiron 8000 is OK, but far from good. The speakers fire sideways and have almost no bass response. In the Matrix, this meant that you could barely hear the music in the big shootout scene. Watching a DVD with the external speakers is more than doable, but you will get the best performance with a good pair of headphones. We would not try and give a presentation with the 8000 without external speakers.

One thing Dell was eager to point out to us was their inclusion of 3D audio for DVD playback. Since this is essentially a software function, we were far from bowled over. My personal comment was something along the lines of, "Oh, it's got that standard Dolby surround sound feel." OK, so I'm a cynic and you might be impressed, but software surround sound is a feature in no way specific to Dell notebooks.