Dell has recently refreshed its popular Inspiron range of notebooks to enable the product line to take advantage of the latest mobile technologies.

The desktop-replacement Inspiron 1720 (4.30kg) is one of the latest members of the family offering a well-balanced blend of performance and features. And in a surprising move for Dell, you can also order it in one of eight different colours.

At the heart of our review model Inspiron 1720 is an Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor, running at 1.8GHz with an 800MHz FSB speed and 2MB of L2 cache. There are limited options on the processor, but you could go from a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5450 up to a Core 2 Duo T7700 clocked at 2.4GHz with 4MB of L2 cache.

Instead of the standard 1GB of PC2-5300 667MHz memory, Dell supplied the unit with 2GB of memory (an additional cost of £111.62), while the notebook will support up to 4GB of memory in total.

In our performance test the Inspiron 1720 achieved an overall score of 4,692 in PCmark05. The Windows Experience Index gives it only a 4.7 overall rating, but thereís plenty of power to perform everyday tasks.

The 17in WXGA+ widescreen display comes with an integrated 2 megapixel webcam and has a native resolution of 1,440x900 pixels, giving plenty of space for working on documents. If you want more desktop real estate then a 17in Ultrasharp WUXGA widescreen version is available, which gives an amazing 1,920x1,200 pixel native resolution and is well worth the extra £105.75 if your budget can stretch to it.

Powering the screen is an Nvidia Geforce Go 8600M GT graphics card, which comes with 256MB of dedicated GDDR2 memory. However, once again, this isnít the standard graphics option, which is the slower 128MB GO 8400M GS. Graphics performance from the 8600M GT isnít going to shatter any records, but an average frame rate in Fear of 86fps at a 1,024x768 resolution is pretty playable.

Build quality is first rate, with the panel supported on two sturdy hinges and the screen itself shows no sign of flexing. The full-size keyboard is well placed and a delight to type on with the keys responsive to the touch, and thereís also a separate numerical keypad.

Besides a large cooling grille, the left-hand side of the chassis just holds the Express Card slot and the power and Wifi switch. The right-hand side is much busier with the optical drive, the 8-in-1 card reader, two audio and two USB 2.0 ports, a 4-pin Firewire port and Lan and VGA ports. The rear panel holds three more USB ports, plus S-video and modem ports.

The notable exception to the complement of ports is the lack of either a DVI or a HDMI port, which a bit odd considering that one of the listed options is a Blu-ray disc (additional £390).
Our 1720 came with a single Fujitsu MHW2160BH hard drive with a 160GB capacity and a 5,400rpm spindle speed, but if this isnít enough for you, you can order it with two hard drives up to a stunning (for a notebook) 500GB total capacity. Thereís an 8x DVD burner included for the day-to-day backing-up of data.

When it comes to connecting up the 1720, the basics supplied with our review sample were 10/100Mbits/sec Ethernet, 802.11g Dell Wifi and a V92 K56 modem; but this being a Dell, thereís a whole host of other options available when you order the 1720, including 3G wireless broadband and Draft-N Wifi.