Immediately after Toshiba's high-definition HD-DVD standard surrendered and fell into oblivion, a plethora of system integrators and PC vendors started to introduce Blu-Ray drives into their configurations.

Dell has been one of the early adopters of the Blu-Ray standard, and has been shipping it with numerous models. Now, the company is introducing an extremely affordable Blu-Ray equipped notebook in the Inspiron 1525 series. This is one of the few available notebooks on the market that hit the retailers' shelves with sub-$1000 price tags.

The Inspiron 1525 model was introduced earlier this year during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It comes with an optimal balance of performance and portability, given by the 15-inch LCD display, running at a maximum screen resolution of 1,280 x 800. As any HD-ready notebook, the Inspiron 1525 model sports a HDMI port for connecting to high-resolution displays and living-room, high-definition television sets.

However, the rest of the notebook's technical specifications are not that bright. For instance, the GMA X3100 graphics accelerator won't leave you breathless, and nor will the single GB of RAM or the 80 GB hard-disk drive.

However, in compensation, you can always upgrade to a fully-fledged Blu-Ray burner for just another $200 over the notebook's selling price. The Inspiron 1525 notebook can be customized to match the users' fashion requirements, and Dell offers it in designs like Chill, Blossom and Commotion, or a spectrum of vibrant colors, like Sunshine Yellow, Midnight Blue and Ruby Red.

The competition is sharper and sharper on the multimedia notebooks market, given the fact that all the major system vendors come with Blu-Ray equipped notebooks. Asustek has recently introduced its M50 multimedia notebook, while Acer has also come up with an extremely affordable Blu-Ray-enabled offering.