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Shedding weight and inches is a national obsession, and notebook PC users are not immune to its appeal. Who wouldn't love to get the power of a 2-inch-thick, 7-pound laptop cinder block in a portable with half the weight and volume? The new Inspiron 2100 notebook from Dell seems designed to grant your wish.

The Inspiron 2100's svelte 1-inch profile and 3.5-pound weight belie the power packed inside the rugged magnesium alloy case. The $1899 base unit sports a 700-MHz Pentium III processor; a 5GB hard drive; 64MB of RAM; a 12.1-inch, 1024 by 768 active-matrix screen; an ATI Rage Mobility graphics card with 4MB of SGRAM; a 56-kbps V.90 modem; a 10/100 ethernet port; and your choice of either Windows Millennium or 2000. In addition, you get a Type II PC Card; USB, monitor, parallel, and PS/2 ports to accompany an external drive bay; and a built-in microphone. On the other hand, a CD-ROM drive will cost you an extra $99.

The fancier $2223 shipping unit I tested was spruced up with Windows Me, a nearly 10GB hard drive, 128MB of SDRAM, and an optional convertible external drive bay that held Dell's $199 DVD-ROM drive. I found typing quite comfortable on the 95-percent-of-standard-size keyboard, and Dell's Synaptics Touchpad was remarkably responsive.

The unit's battery life of 2.5 hours is about average for a notebook today. The 2100's performance was respectable, too: Its PC WorldBench 2000 score of 127 is in line with the marks recorded by other notebooks with its configuration.

The Dell Inspiron 2100 may be just right for users who seek a laptop that can fit any carrying case as well as handle a much larger PC's workload.

SUMMARY

Inspiron 2100 PRO: Lightweight notebook offers the power of a big portable. CON: Base price quickly disappears when you add needed options. VALUE: If you want power in a small package, look no further. List price: $2223 Dell 800/388-8542 www.dell.com

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