Dell launches Studio, Studio Slim desktops

Hoping to do the same for its towers what it did with the Studio Hybrid mini PC, Dell today launched two new entries to the Studio line for desktops. The Studio Desktop and narrower Studio Slim Desktop both have a sleeker, glossy black design and make features standard that are left out of the similarly-shaped Inspiron line and are suited to home theaters, including HDMI video out and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) input. Blu-ray combo and full burner drives are also available.

Both are also based on Intel's latest desktop platform and handle up to a 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad processor and a full 8GB of memory when using Windows Vista 64-bit. GMA X4500HD integrated video is also standard. Other options are similarly high-end compared to Inspirons and include as much as 1TB of hard drive space and a Radeon HD 3450 video card, even for the slimmer model.

In spite of physical differences, both the Studio and Studio Slim start at $549 for a system with a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive and a DVD writer. Orders begin today, though systems are listed as shipping only in early October.