Dell Studio XPS 16 Review


Software and Accessories



As with this unit's 13" sibling, accessory junkies will certainly feel underwhelmed when cracking open the elegant black box in which the Studio XPS 16 arrives in. The only extras that Dell includes are a soft, almost velvet-like sheath to hold the machine, a few pamphlets (Setup Guide, etc.), an AC adapter and a software booklet filled with restore discs and the like. No mouse, no kitchen sink--just those few extras alongside the machine itself.


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On the software front, Dell does a commendable job of keeping the bloatware level at a minimum, with our machine only having to load an unwanted McAfee Security Center and Dell Data Safe in the taskbar (outside of more "normal" applications like Bluetooth Manager). Our test rig came with Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, Microsoft Works 9, McAfee Security Center, a Vista reinstallation DVD and a Studio XPS 16 drivers / utilities DVD. We have to say, however, that Vista seemed to load up surprisingly slow, but we'll touch more on that later in the Performance sections.


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As for pre-installed software, we found PowerDVD DX, Adobe Acrobat Reader 9, Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer, Dell Video Chat, Dell Webcam, FastAccess Facial Recognition, Roxio Creator DE, a few basic Windows games and Internet Explorer. Like we stated earlier, it's all pretty minimal.


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