This laptop wasn't much of a secret as it was, and it turns out reviewers got an early shot at it as well. The Inspiron 1525 from Dell is about as cheap as standard-size laptops go, with a starting price of $500, but Dell has made surprising gains in the looks and size department -- the major complaints levied towards the 1520. Dell shaved 25% off the size, 30% off the thickness and half a pound off the weight in building this new model, and while it might not exactly have the looks of the m1330, it's certainly not the eyesore the 1520 was. Reviewers got to play around with a $999 configuration, and found performance to be just fine for standard applications, but the lack of a dedicated graphics option makes this one a non-starter for gamers. Perks like HDMI out and solid battery life for this price range are icing on the cake, and there are multiple color options and patterns you can trick out your 1525 with, but for the most part this is a simple but nice budget laptop, so we're guessing you've already got a decent idea if it's what you're looking for.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in; image courtesy of NotebookReview]

Read - Laptop Magazine (4.5 out of 5: "Our favorite mainstream budget notebook.")
Read - NotebookReview - ("The Inspiron 1525 is exactly the notebook that the Inspiron 1520 should have been in the first place.")
Read - PC Mag - (3.5 out of 5: "Unfortunately, the slimmer design also means that it had to forgo an option for dedicated graphics.")

For those of you who've recently placed a Dell laptop order only to find yourself high and dry on shipment, rest assured you're not alone -- not by a long shot. Of course, there have been problems with shipment on the XPS M1330 for some time -- problems so severe that a thread on NotebookReview's forum concerning delays for the laptop has had over 9,000 replies to date (a record for the site), but apparently that's not the only system affected. It would seem that customers who've placed orders for the Inspiron 1420, 1520, and 1720 are also feeling the burn of Dell's little stop-up. Some of the disgruntled purchasers have even gone to the trouble of breaking down Inspiron delays based on lid color, which, for the 1520 (for instance) runs the gamut from no delays for a black lid, to a whopping 11-day delay if you want to go red, green, or pink. This phenomena has even led to buyers forgoing their desired color choices just to get a laptop in a timely fashion. With the continued slowdown in production and increasing heat from the competition, Dell and its customers may find that this minor bump in the road is turning into a major headache.

[Thanks, Paul]

After an initial appearance on Canada's site, Dell's new XPS m1330 and Inspiron laptops have broken free from the rumor mill. Available on-line now, the new 17-, 15-, and 14-inch Inspirons start at $769 while the XPS m1330 hottie will set you back at least $1,684 $1,299. Specs are in line with what we've already heard: LED-backlighting, slot-loading and Blu-ray optical, SSDs, big juicy 1,920 x 1,200 resolutions, GeForce Go 8600M GT graphics, 2x hard disk configurations and enough colors to make you doubt your manhood.

Update: Dell just updated the website (again) to reflect a starting price of $1,299 for the XPS m1330. That's more like it.

[Thanks, everybody who sent this in]

Attention Wal-Mart shoppers, we've got pics-a-plenty from Dell's new Inspiron lineup. Better yet, French forum lesDelliens proclaims to have the specs on not only the 1520, 1521, 1720, and 1721 already churning in the rumor mill, but also on a new 14.1-inch 1420. Everything certainly looks kosher but you'll have to judge for yourselves. Click-through for a glimpse at the purported specifications (via machine translated French) or just click into the gallery below. Mmm, so many pretty pictures.