Managing a very respectable battery life of four and a half hours during a full productivity workload, Dell's Inspiron scored around middle of the pack under PCMark04 but failed to deliver in 3D, bringing up the rear in third last place. High performance and value scores but a slightly below average feature score helped this notebook achieve a 10 percent above average overall score - marginally missing out on an award. Lacking basic connectivity such as infrared and legacy parallel ports, this 'book is a bit bare when it comes to the basics. Tipping the scale at 3.6kg and one of the chunkier housed notebooks for its spec, this isn't going to be one for the frequent travellers or lovers of ultra portable units. Anyone after a slimmer housed strong performer may do well to look the way of the BenQ Joybook 5000-V022 or recommended ASUS M24N.