M301z and M101z: Dell cruising the Nile with AMD

After months of Intel domination of low energy platforms, AMD has come back with its alternative: Nile. Immediately adopted by Dell, you can now find it in 2 new economical ultra-portable laptops, the Inspiron M101z and the Inspiron M301z.

The most compact, the Dell Inspiron M101z, is an 11.6-inch (1366 x 768 pixels) ultra-portable laptop. It's putting high-end netbooks in the shade with pricing that starts at £379.

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At this price, the basic configuration includes an AMD Athlon II Neo K125 single-core with 2 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive and an ATI RS880M chipset that holds an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics solution. This card handles HD video decoding. Best however to forget 3D gaming, unless you want to compromise radically on graphics settings.

The intermediary version on sale for an extra £50 (£429) and gives you a dual-core processor, the AMD Athlon II Neo K325. The same processor also equips the top-end machine at £499, which also has 4GB of RAM and a faster 320 GB (7200 rpm) hard drive.

At 1.56Kg, it is hardly heavier than a netbook of equivalent size and according to Dell, it gives 6h36 of battery life with its 6-cell 56 Whr battery. We like the brushed aluminium finish for the wrist rest, which prevents it getting too grubby.

It is, then, a good alternative to netbooks for those looking for a bit more rapidity (especially the dual core models ). It will be best however to limit yourself to office doc work and some photo/video viewing. Otherwise you'll soon have the machine on its knees.

If we look up the range, the Dell Inspiron M301z moves things up a gear with a 13.3-inch screen (still 1366 x 768 pixels). At 1.78 Kg and 3 cm thickness, it's still a very manageable size.

Dell Inspiron M301z Find the best price

The basic version starts and just £449 and is equipped with an AMD Athlon II Neo K125 single-core, 2 GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive. Like on the Inspiron M101z, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics part is used on all 3 versions of the M301z.

For £529, the intermediary version of the M301z gets a dual-core processor, the AMD Athlon Neo II K325. The RAM is also doubled to 4 GB and the 320 GB hard drive is now faster at 7200 rpm. Lastly, the top-end model is at £579 and here you get a still higher performance processor, the Turion II Neo K625. You also get a bigger hard drive 500 GB (7200 rpm).

Just like the M101z, the Dell Inspiron M301z has been designed for office doc and internet usage also with photo/film viewing. For more multi-tasking ease-of-use, we recommend the dual-core models, in spite of their higher pricing.

In terms of the operating system, we're pleased to be able to tell you that Windows 7 64-bit is used on all versions of the M101z and M301z.

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