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Desktop types are always kicking their laptop counterparts around, stealing their lunch money, and making fun of their slow and undersized hard drives.

Most laptops have slower 5,400rpm or even 4,200rpm hard drives, usually between 120GB and 250GB in size. For high-end types, there are 320GB laptop hard drives, and also 7,200rpm laptop hard drives, but you couldn't get both of those specs in the same laptop drive [dramatic pause...] until now.

Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Seagate have all recently announced 320GB 7,200rpm laptop hard drives, but Dell is the first to stick them in a consumer laptop, using the Seagate drive in the massive 17-inch XPS M1730.

"Laptop users want every bit of capacity, performance, and durability that desktop PCs deliver," says Michael Wingert, Seagate's executive vice president and general manager, Personal Compute Business, in a press release.

We checked out the Dell Web site and the 320GB drives are available right now, for $50 more than a standard 5,400rpm 320GB drive. Look for these to show up in Alienware laptops next, followed by desktop replacement systems from other manufacturers.

Dell will offer an Nvidia dual graphics chip upgrade for 17-inch XPS M1730 gaming notebook owners--but stepping up won't be a cakewalk for MediaDirect users.

Dell XPS M1730 notebook with Nvdia 8800M GTX

(Credit: Dell)

The upgrade from the Nvidia dual 8700M GT to dual 8800M GTX graphics is in the works and will likely be released later this month, according to Dell.

Some users were upset when Dell upgraded the graphics in newer models of the M1730 to the 8800M GTX. The XPS 1730 with the 8800M GTX earned a score of almost 13,500 in 3Dmark06--which is about a 49 percent performance gain over two 8700M GT cards in the same notebook.

"In other words, games like Crysis, BioShock, Far Cry 2 and Age of Conan will scream," Dell said.

There will be two options. One will be done with an "installation package" and the other will be a "do-it-yourself kit."

"Considering the number of screws holding this beast together, most people will probably want the installation," Dell said.

There is one gotcha though. "MediaDirect 3.3 is not compatible with the driver for the (new) Nvida card," Dell said. MediaDirect is a Dell technology that enables a user to watch DVD movies, slideshows, or listen to music without having to boot the complete XP operating system. MediaDirect is installed in a special partition on the hard disk drive. When the computer is off, pressing the MediaDirect button will boot the MediaDirect partition instead of XP.

Dell said that the MediaDirect "incompatibility means that the MediaDirect software needs to be upgraded. Unfortunately, the upgrade will require a reformat and reinstallation. Beyond that, it will also require you to repartition the hard disk to make room for the new version of MediaDirect, which is a bit larger. Data loss has been a major concern for the engineers working on a solution. At this point, it would appear that there's really no way around wiping the drive to make the upgrade work with every feature."

Dell XPS M1730: now with Penryn.

(Credit: CNET Networks, Inc.)

Those of you hunting for the latest technology in Dell's 17-inch gaming laptop will be pleased to learn the M1730 has received its Penryn update. Since Intel announced its new 45-nanometer chips last month at CES, they've been ever so slowly making their way into systems. Dell is replacing the T7700 and the T7800 Merom CPUs with the T9300 and the T9500 Penryn chips, respectively. There will be no price differential between the older Merom chips and their Penryn replacements.

Dell's XPS M1730 laptop now lists two Penryn CPU options, the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300 and the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo T8300 (which has half the cache, 3MB, of the T9000-series chips). The two Penryn chips cost less than the Core 2 Extreme X7900 and Core 2 Duo T7800 options. (Expect the T7800 option to soon be replaced by the T9500.)

Dell's XPS M1330, which got Penryn last week, boasts three Penryn chips, the T8300 and the T9300 plus the 2.6GHz T9500. The T8300 sells for the same price as the T7500 chip, which is a generation behind and clocked slightly slower but serves up more L2 cache. I say you sacrifice that extra 1MB of cache and get the new chip, if deciding between the two. Better yet, spend an extra $125 for the T9300, which is faster and serves up 6MB of L2 cache. The T9300 would seem to reside in the price-performance sweet spot.

Dell has told us that the Latitude line would also be getting a Penryn update this month, but there is still no sign of the new chips on Dell's business laptops.

The Dell XPS M1730 we just reviewed took home an Editors' Choice award. This massive, 11-pound laptop is about as good as it gets for mobile gaming. It serves up a most powerful mix of components, from a Core 2 Extreme CPU to Nvidia SLI graphics. The M1730 even finds room for Ageia's PhysX processor. While we liked what we saw from the M1730 in our labs, what helped it score so highly was a number of new features absent from previous XPS models. There's a gamer-friendly, 10-key number pad, a useful status LCD above the keyboard, and Dell's Wi-Fi Catcher that lets you search for wireless networks without having to boot the system. Sure, we'd like it if Dell included a Blu-ray drive (it's a $550 option) in a laptop that tops the $4,000 mark, but the M1730's leading performance and big feature set help to justify the cost. Dell's flagship XPS laptop isn't the only game in town, however. We've seen two other 17-inch models and a plucky 15-incher that deliver the goods gamers require.

If you pass on the XPS M1730, Dell would hope you'd fall into the arms of Alienware, its wholly owned subsidiary. We wouldn't blame you. The Area-51 m9750 we reviewed at the end of the July is still tops with a DirectX 9 game like F.E.A.R.. (The XPS M1730 uses the newer GeForce 8700M GT, which is slightly slower than the GeForce 7950GTX but supports DirectX 10.) It's a little lighter than Dell's 17-inch XPS, slipping in below 10 pounds, but it doesn't have an HDMI if you're looking for a one-cable solution for outputting video and audio to an HDTV. It's obvious this luxury machine is crafted with care, though opinions may vary on the Alien-head motif. Lastly, we like the fact that Alienware gives you a choice of Vista or XP. (That performance-minded Alienware chose to outfit our review unit with XP should tell you something about the hit you take with Vista.)

The Toshiba Qosmio G45 is more of portable home theater than mobile gaming rig, but its lone GeForce 8600M GT card still serves up solid frame rates. While it holds its own as a gaming laptop, its real charms lie with its multimedia goodness. True, its 1920x1200 resolution is the same as found on Dell's and Alienware's 17-inch laptops, but it costs about $1,000 less than those models, trading raw performance for features that include an HDMI out, Harman Kardon speakers with subwoofer, and multimedia controls that make it easy to manage your media.

If a 17-inch laptop is just too big for your purposes, Velocity Micro has an interesting configuration. Its 15-inch NoteMagix x25 uses a desktop CPU, which helped the system excel on CNET Labs' benchmarks. The downside? It's big and bulky and generates a lot of heat. And its battery life is abysmal. In the end, it's probably no more portable than a larger 17-inch laptop because of its heft and poor battery life. But you do get all of that raw muscle for less than $2,000.

You can find the XPS m1730 in your e-mail, but not through Dell's Web site.

We've been waiting around for some time now for official word on the Dell XPS m1730. We got a behind-closed-doors peek at the system last month, and we've been hearing rumors and leaks from all corners of the Web.

The original release date for Dell's sequel to the popular 17-inch XPS m1710 got pushed back more than a month, and was still up in the air earlier this week. But this morning, after some more spec info turned up online, we got an official marketing e-mail from Dell with the subject line: "The XPS M1730 - You Asked For It. Order Now."

That's right, Dell literally sneaked the system up on its site at 3 a.m. PST, and now you can order this beast of a laptop. While we've mentioned before that you can get high-end parts such as a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor, 2 x 200GB 7,200rpm hard drives, a Blu-ray optical drive, Twin 512MB Nvidia GeForce 8,700M GT GPUs, and 64GB solid state hard drives, the only model available right now seems to be a preconfigured one, with the following specs:

Dell is keeping tight-lipped on this, but apparently they've got a new high-end XPS gaming laptop coming out soon called the XPS m1730. We all know about it, as it's been leaked on Engadget, Laptoping, and our favorite French tech Web site, LesDeLLiens, among other places.

The purported M1730 should be worth checking out if the various online accounts are correct--it offers Intel's new Core 2 Extreme X7800 CPU, a Blu-ray drive, SLI graphics, solid-state hard drive options, and other high-end parts. From the photos we've seen, it does have one major advantage over the current m1710--the new model has a separate number pad.

The latest Internet scuttlebutt has the system being delayed from its original late-August release date to September 21 for the U.S., Europe, and Asia, according to Engadget--so it'll be a few more weeks before we see if all the online rumor mills were right.

Imagine our surprise when we were surfing around the Web this weekend and found some alleged top-secret leaked info about a new upcoming 17-inch gaming laptop from Dell, reportedly called the XPS m1730.

Of course, after all the previous leaks about Dell's 13-inch m1330 and the rest of Dell's current laptop lineup, you'd think the company would pretty much expect this kind of thing.

In any event, our favorite French tech Web site, LesDeLLiens.com, reports that the XPS m1730 will be released (at least in France) on August 27, and it supposedly will offer Intel's new Core 2 Extreme X7800 CPU, a Blu-ray drive, SLI graphics, and even a separate number pad (something the current model, the XPS m1710, lacks). The same basic info is also reported on another site known for leaked laptop info, NotebookItalia.it.

Is this the Dell XPS m1730?

Of course, getting your tech scoops through roughly translated French and Italian Web sites is a notoriously sketchy business at best, so we'll just have to wait and see if this new model pops up on Dell's site around the end of the month.