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Dell has resumed shipments of its Inspiron XPS system after a problem with the notebook caused the company to hold over deliveries of the notebook until last week. The Inspiron XPS is Dell's first notebook computer aimed exclusively at gaming enthusiasts.

"We saw a condition with both the Inspiron XPS and the Inspiron 9100: we determined the root cause, fixed it, tested it, and it is now resolved. Shipments of the laptops were on hold but resumed last week," Dell spokesperson Venancio Figueroa says.

Venancio declines to reveal the nature of the problem, how many customers were affected by the "condition" or shipment delays, and is uncertain of when the shipment hold was initially put in place by the Round Rock, Texas, company.

"The problem was spotted at Dell and we took the initiative to fix it on behalf of Dell customers," Figueroa says.

Launched last month, the Inspiron XPS system is loaded with the type of processing power, graphics and sound that gamers demand.

The notebook comes with an Intel Pentium 4 or Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor running at 3.4 GHz and ATI Technologies' Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card with 128MB of memory. It also has a 60GB or 80GB hard drive, 512MB to 2GB of DDR RAM running at 400 MHz, a DVD-RW drive, four USB 2.0 ports, and an IEEE 1394 port.

Possible Problem

According to postings on both the notebookforums.com and Dell forum Web sites, users have been experiencing lock up and display corruption problems with both the Inspiron XPS and the lower-priced Inspiron 9100.

The majority of the postings point to faulty cards, such as the ATI Radeon 9700 graphics card, as the root of the problem. Figueroa says the problem is not related to a graphics card. As for reports that expensive on-site technical service has been required for some units that did ship, Figueroa said he had no knowledge of any such cases.

"Some of the reports out there are inaccurate, but we are not going to disclose specifics," Venancio says. "We're currently working through our orders, making sure that customers can receive their notebooks as soon as we build them and ship them, and we are working on decreasing delays."

The Inspiron XPS is competing with other gaming laptops from Alienware, Hypersonic PC Systems, and VoodooPC. Venancio says that Dell is not releasing numbers indicating how many Inspiron XPS and the Inspiron 9100 notebooks have been shipped or ordered, and isn't commenting on if sales of the notebooks are above, below, or on Dell's targets.