The media controls allow you to enjoy music and film without troubling Windows

You might have spotted two items missing from the impressive list of ports, namely a DVI and/or a HDMI port - which become more of a problem and even more puzzling omissions when you consider that you can order your 1720 with a Blu-ray drive (additional £387.75) in place of the standard DVD burner. The question then becomes how you output HD content from the notebook to a external screen without either of these two ports?

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To talk to the outside world the 1720 offers plenty of options, including 3G Wireless Broadband and Draft-N Wi-fi but our review model was a bit more basic; 10/100 Ethernet (disappointingly no Gigabit option), 802.11g Dell Wi-Fi, and a V92 K56 modem.

Verdict

Dell's Inspiron 1720 is well put together and, given its price, has an impressive feature list. As is the case with nearly all Dell's systems you can customise it to your own tastes when it comes to ordering, and the option to fit two hard drives makes it stand out from the crowd. But the glaring omission of either DVI or HDMI out ports is a bit silly, and then offering a Blu-ray drive as an option even sillier - especially as the hefty size of the chassis will confine it to within a stone's throw of the mains, and you will be wanting to output your content to a decent sized screen rather than having everyone huddled around a notebook.