Dell is staking a claim for Apple’s traditional territory with the introduction of a PC preloaded with multimedia software from Adobe.
The new XPS 420 desktop will include Adobe’s Photoshop Elements image editor, Premiere Elements movie maker and Soundbooth CS3 audio software. It is the first time that Dell has offered this kind of software on its PCs and the first time Adobe has bundled these three apps together in what it is calling Elements Studio.
To make the most of this software, the XPS 420 pairs its dual-core or optional quad-core Intel processor with the Dell Xcelerator – hardware that accelerates video processing by as much as 25% while reducing the burden on the rest of the system by as much as 86%, according to the PC maker.
“Our goal is to help people turn their digital lifestyle dreams into reality, whether it’s viewing family moments and memories, telling your story with photos and videos, creating videos for social networking sites like YouTube, recording TV shows or converting vinyl album libraries to digital files,” says Karen Plotkin, director of consumer desktop marketing.
“The combination of the XPS 420 and the Adobe Elements Studio software makes it easy to harness creativity and imagination and share ideas, style and personality.”
The machine runs Windows Vista and has a small LCD display built into the case that makes use of Microsoft’s SideShow technology to provide access to stored media, certain system functions and standard SideShow gadgets without using the keyboard or mouse. These gadgets include the date and time default screen, Audio Playback, Picture Slideshow, Video Playback and PC Monitor.
Dell offers a choice of Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad or Quad Extreme processors, with any one of four graphics cards: Nvidia’s GeForce 8800GTX
or GeForce 8600GTS; ATI’s HD 2600 XT – RV630 or HD 2400 PRO – RV610. UP to three bays are available for hard drives, and memory can be expanded to 4GB. A Blu-ray drive can also be fitted in custom configurations.
The XPS 420 costs from £999 (inc VAT).
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