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Gallery: Dell's designs on product lust

Dell thrived in a time when PC users just cared about what was inside the computer, how fast it went, and what was the size of the monitor. But times are changing.
By Andy Smith, Contributor
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Dell thrived in a time when PC users just cared about what was inside the computer--how fast it went, how much storage it had, and the resolution and size of the monitor. But after seeing competitors such as Apple steal the spotlight with new designs and colors, Michael Dell decided his company should go in a different direction from its beige boxes.

See Larry Dignan's blog for more on Dell's new product look.

One of Dell's hottest beige PCs in 2000 was the Dell Dimension 4100 which wowed customers with a Pentium III /866 CPU; 128MB of RAM; Windows 98; a 10GB hard drive; a 16MB graphics card; and a 17-inch monitor.

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Enter the 21st century with Dell's XPS 730 H2C Gaming System. By the way, the H2C is loaded with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Extreme processors; Vista; single, dual and quad graphics solutions from Nvidia and ATI; a 2-8GB Dual channel DDR3 SDRAM system memory; and an H2C hybrid cooling system is available.

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Dell notebook sales are up 45 percent with the help of Inspiron laptops that come in 8 colors.

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Dell's all-in-one PC, the XPS One, comes in red.

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Even servers have a new look for sitting in a rack--the PowerEdge 1955.

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Special Edition World of Warcraft laptops

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The XPS m2010 with its overhead Webcam made an appearance in the movie, Ironman.

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XPS laptops come in four colors.

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Dell even makes the corner of an XPS laptop look dramatic.

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Dell Vostro's are pretty plain but they at least have a little sparkle.

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A built-in handle for this XPS laptop.

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Dell goes all out for these gamer PCs.

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The side of an XPS 420.

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The Dell Precision family.

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The XPS 210 has a simple, yet stylish, design.

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But if you like vanilla, the Vostro could be for you.

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