Back to School with New Inspiron Systems

Today is clearly shaping up to be one of Dell's best days, as the American systems vendor has just unveiled one very interesting and highly anticipated product, the Studio Hybrid PC. But that's not all that Dell has prepared for this year's "Back to school" season, as the company has also announced two new products as part of its Inspiron lineup. Targeted at both portable and desktop users, the newcomers are the Inspiron 13 notebook and the Inspiron 518 desktop PC.

As most of you already know, Dell is one of the largest systems vendors worldwide, occasionally competing with HP for the number one spot. The latest product additions are basically improved models of some of the vendor's currently available systems.

The newly announced Dell Inspiron 13 is essentially a sub-$700 13-inch laptop designed to weigh less than 5 pounds. Combining a "simple and clean design encased in glossy Pacific blue with black trim," some of the key features of this notebook are a 13-inch LCD, touch sensitive media buttons, 8-in-1 media card reader and slot-loading DVD drive. Unfortunately, the standard configuration won't provide its users with built-in broadband wireless networking, built-in webcam and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, but all these will be available as optional upgrades.

A $699 configuration will also be made available at Wal-Mart in the U.S starting with August 3, while configurable systems are expected to arrive later this month at Dell.com.

The Inspiron 518 desktop system will come with DirectX 10 support through its integrated graphics, gigabit Ethernet and a number of easy-access USB ports placed on top of the case. The system will provide 500GB of storage space on a single hard drive and support for quad core processors. It will be available very soon at a starting price tag of $349, which means that it will be ready for the "Back to School" shopping frenzy.