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Dell XPS One: The most beautiful Dell ever. Don't laugh

Michael Dell says the XPS One is "perhaps the most beautiful Dell ever", which is damning with faint praise if ever we heard it. It certainly had a big pile of drool around it at CES 2008, though

Rory Reid
2 min read

Michael Dell says the XPS One is "perhaps the most beautiful Dell ever", which is hardly extravagant praise, but he could be right. It certainly had a big enough pile of drool around it at CES 2008 to back up his claims -- and today you can drop £999 and buy one for yourself.

Yup, it's another all-in-one PC designed to usurp the Apple iMac and although we don't think it's quite as sexy, it's not far off. We like the angular aluminium stand, the angular rear panel, the tempered, smoked glass base, and the overall cable-freeness of the design.

We're not keen on the fact it's black and silver like every other piece of consumer electronics hardware in the world, but there's hope: the XPS One also comes in a RED version (pictured), starting from £1,299. It's more expensive, but Dell will give $80 (£40) of the overall sale price to the Global Fund to fight AIDS. That's equivalent, we're told, to more than 6 months of anti-retroviral treatment for one person.

Anti-AIDS feature aside, the best thing about the XPS One is the blue LED lights littered around the front of the 20-inch screen. They're attached to a proximity sensor so they glow blue when you move your hand in their general direction, and switch off when you sit back to watch a movie. There's also a half moon-shaped arc of lights that become visible to let you know there's a disc in the slot-loading drive.

The entry-level XPS One packs an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 CPU clocked at 2.2GHz, an integrated Intel GMA 3100 video card, 2GB RAM, a 320GB, 7,200rpm hard drive, an 8x DVD burner and a hybrid analogue/digital TV tuner with remote. As usual, you can customise it with a faster CPU, better graphics and more RAM. Have a closer look by visiting the Dell Web site and watch for a full review soon. -Rory Reid

Update: Read our full Dell XPS One preview