Hands On with Dell's XPS Mobile Concept PC
It took us a half hour to find Dell's booth at CES, hidden away in the cheap seats with such neighbors as Doberman Security and Freedom Laser Therapy. But our long hike through the crowded hallways was worth it, since Dell was showing off the XPS Mobile Concept PC, which was taken offstage so quickly after Michael Dell's speech yesterday that we almost thought it was a cardboard mockup. Well, now that we've seen it up close, we can confirm that it's definitely not cardboard. It's a fully functional prototype PC, weighing in at 18 pounds, with a 20-inch display, sporting 8 speakers, and running Windows XP Media Center Edition. It's got a Bluetooth keyboard along with a matching Bluetooth remote, has DVI output for adding additional displays, and supports both dual hard drives and dual-core processors. The Properties dialog of My Computer identifies it as an Inspiron M2010, though we don't know if that model name will stick, and lists its processor as a dual-core 2.1GHz Intel T2600. We still don't know whether Dell is ever going to make any of these for public consumption (though there are apparently "a few" like this with "more to come" according to the Dell rep in the booth). But one thing we do now know: it's real and it works.