Technology Feast

If you were waiting to get a laptop for any reason, your gamble has paid off. Dell just rebooted the Studio laptop line with some brand new processors from Intel. You know the Clarksfield processor that we’ve been awaiting for months? Well they made their way into Dell’s new Studio laptops, and it appears you’ll have some serious power in your hands. Provided you get one, of course.

Dell’s announcement of the new Studio laptops coincides perfectly with Intel’s announcement of the Core i7 (Clarksfield) line of processors, both of which happened today. The Core i7 chips use new quad-core technology to seriously boost the speed of the processor. And according to early reviews, the processor does exactly what Intel said it would. The Core i7 line is also perfect for laptops because it saves battery life. If not in use or operating under a light workload, the processor can slow down or shut off some of the cores, which can significantly extend battery life.

So you’re probably ready to hear what’s going to be in these new Dell laptops. The Studio 15, Studio 17 and Studio XPS 16 will all be getting a choice of the Core i7 720QM or Core i7 820QM processors. The 720QM clocks in at 1.6GHz with 1,333MHz FSB and 6MB of L3 cache; the 820QM ramps up to 1.73GHz.

Things aren’t changing much for these laptops aside from the new processor, however, the Studio 17 got a few tweaks. These tweaks include a JBL-sourced 2.1 audio system, space for a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 video card if you want one and support for dual HDDs.

None of this means anything unless attached to a price. The Studio 15 will be $999; the Studio 17 comes in at $1099, and the gaming-centric XPS 16 is $1249. Also, the Studio 15 can be configured with Windows Vista or Windows XP (only Vista is available in the other two). While XP is preferable over Vista, the upgrade pricing from Vista to Windows 7 is cheaper than upgrading from XP.

Since we’re so close to the Windows 7 launch, you’re probably better off getting Vista and upgrading.