Digital Home Thoughts: Dell's Monster Notebook

"When the big boys come to play, you know you're doing something right. Right? On Thursday, PC heavyweight Dell takes on the likes of Alienware and Voodoo -- relative PC upstarts -- with the company's first gaming notebook. Packed with performance, the Inspiron XPS notebook will also please performance-hungry users such as video editors. Radical cool looks? Maybe not, but the guts of this machine are nothing less than top-of-the-line, marking Dell's arrival in the lucrative gaming market."

Wow - imagine doing video editing with THIS thing sitting in your lap! Once you got over it burning your thighs, I think it would be a lot of fun to use. ;-) Killer specs: Pentium 4 3.4 Ghz, 1 GB DDR 400 mhz dual-channel memory, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, 60 GB 7200 RPM HD, gigabit ethernet, DVI output, WiFI, and Bluetooh. Amazing! 8O

I'm in the market for a multimedia-friendly notebook, something that I can use as a digital media editing workstation, for both video, audio, and photos. This looks tempting, but I have to wonder what the grudge against Firewire is. Why only one wee 4-pin port? Why not a full 6-pin port, or even both (it's a nine pound laptop after all). I'm a big fan of Firewire, so it's frustrating to me that these vendors don't give us more ports (on both desktops and laptops). Yes, USB 2.0 is a great solution, but if you've got a Firewire hard drive and a DV camera, you're out of ports (unless your hard drive has bridge port, which many do).