Dell's first dual-core laptop, the e1705, inaugurates the company's new Entertainment line of laptops, complementing its existing Premium XPS line. The e1705 will replace the Inspiron 9300 and will raise the bar on the type of specs you can expect to see in desktop-replacement multimedia machines in 2006. In addition to Intel's Core Duo T2400 processor, which contains two 1.83GHz cores, the e1705 will be equipped with the Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 GPU, a Serial ATA hard drive, and faster RAM and frontside bus (667MHz, compared to the previous generation's 533MHz speed). A high-end configuration of the e1705 will start shipping on January 16 for $2,299. Lucky us, we already have one in our Labs, and the benchmarking process is underway.

Article discussion: Dell's dual-core laptop: the e1705