As a gamer, I had not given laptops much of any thought. After all, why spend $2,500-$3,000 for a gaming-worthy laptop when you can custom build a desktop with better performance for around $1,000. That changed last October, when Dell had a one-day, $750 instant off any purchase over $1,500 sale. I quickly researched Dell's mobile lineup and decided the Inspiron 9100 was my best choice.

The 9100 is a DTR (desktop replacement) that promises to give excellent performance in both gaming and multimedia - areas where laptops have always trailed desktops. It actually shares the same chassis as the Inspiron XPS, meaning you get the same package minus the gigabit Ethernet and silver XPS accents, at a few hundred dollars less.

It was configured as followed:

• Pentium 4 3.2 GHz (Prescott), 800 FSB, HT - Intel 865 Chipset
• 512 MB DDR3200 - 256 MB x 2 running in dual channel
• ATI Radeon Mobility 9700, 128 MB
• 15.4" WXGA LCD, 1280 x 800 Native Resolution
• 80 GB 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Hard Drive
• Dual Layer / Dual Format DVD Burner

The price was a cool $1,054.55 after tax and shipping. My primary reason for choosing the 9100 was to have a portable system that can do anything - take to LAN parties, encode videos, watch movies, etc (and hopefully, a productive thing or two). Features such as weight and battery life were of less importance.

Overall, I am very pleased with the construction of the laptop. With a weight of nine pounds, it might scare off a few people, but I have yet to find it burdensome. Compared to lugging around my monitor and tower, bringing this laptop to LAN parties is a breeze.

If the blue accents around the touchpad/keyboard are not your style, you have the option of ordering the silver accents from the XPS - Dell part #'s T4461 and X1501.

My only gripe with the construction came when I noticed that there was no locking screw for the optical drive bay, which is typically found on other Dell laptops such as the 8600 or 600m. Within two seconds, the drive can be effortlessly removed, making it easy for someone to steal.

The 9100 has a wealthy collection of features:

• Four USB 2.0 ports (one that doubles as a powered USB port)
• One firewire port
• DVI, S-Video, VGA
• SPDIF out, subwoofer integrated into battery
• 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11g WI-FI, v.92 56k Modem
• Mic/headset jacks, built in microphone
• Dual pointing devices (touchpad and pointing stick)

The four USB ports are especially welcomed, since I tend to use at least three while gaming (mouse, USB headset, and game pad).

The subwoofer makes a noticeable difference - watching movies or playing music has never sounded this good on a laptop. The audio chipset is a no-thrills SigmaTel C-Major Audio that, for the most part, does its job. So far the only issue I ran into with it was in the NASCAR Racing 2002/2003 games by Papyrus. All car sound effects are distorted, making the 800hp v8 engines sound like rice burners. Apparently, this is a known problem with any SigmaTel chipset, with no foreseeable fix.

The 15.4" LG Phillips LCD gets high marks. Brightness and color are a good deal above average from what I have seen in laptops. Being a 25ms display, I was a bit worried at first as to how it would hold up in gaming. To my surprise, ghosting never got close to being a distraction or annoying in various first-person shooters such as UT2004, Quake3, and Far Cry.

The native resolution has an unusual aspect ratio of 16:10, so you are bound to run into a few games without the proper native support. I recommend checking out the Widescreen Gaming Forum for help on getting virtually any game to work at a non-standard resolution.

No problems were noticed with the system after the obligatory format/reinstall of Windows to get rid of all the excess software Dell puts in. Since everything was working beautifully, it was time to tweak/upgrade. My next two upgrades came literally less than a week since I had received the system: a Radeon Mobility 9800 and 1 GB of RAM.