The Inspiron 8000 we tested came with an 850MHz Pentium III processor. An 850MHz processor, matched up to Intel'si815 chipset, provides more than enough power for most of today's uses, including business tasks and games. 128MB of SODIMM SDRAM gave the pre-installed Windows 2000 OS plenty of RAM in which to run free. A 32GB HD provides more room than most people will ever need, and while it was poky compared to desktop drives, it did perform to our satisfaction.

A DVD-ROM drive lets you install software and play DVD movies (more on that later). The drive mounts in a hot-swappable bay on the center front of the machine. The battery installs on the right front and the floppy installs on the left front. The floppy can be removed and either another type of drive or a second battery can be installed in its place. The DVD drive is integrated into the left size of the machine, towards the rear. All the removable parts have latches on the bottom of the machine. The latches are easier to deal with than on the 5000e model, and with a little work you can remove the drives without flipping the entire machine over. Still, it would be much more elegant to have the latches on the sides of the machine where they are easily accessible.

There is a PC card slot on the right side of the machine, towards the back. Dell sells optional PC Card Ethernet and modems for the 8000, but better yet, they also sell a Ethernet/Modem mini-PCI card. We strongly recommend that card as having to use a PC Card is a certifiable pain in the a$$. Our test machine came with a modem but no Ethernet.

There are a few extra controls above the keyboard. Specifically, there are CD/DVD controls for playing and moving around the disk, and there is a Dell specific help key. Unfortunately, if you ever have to do a clean install, the buttons will no longer work until you find the right drivers.

The Inspiron 8000 comes with a single IEEE1394 port, a.k.a. FireWire. The port lies on the right side of the notebook, underneath the PC Card slots and next to the audio jacks. FireWire is useful for digital video as well as hooking up external hard drives. It helps turn the Inspiron 8000 into more of a multimedia machine than the other Dell notebooks. One additional nice feature of the i815 is that it has two USB ports, though most people will likely only ever need one.