Siggraph

Laptops are on track to soon replace desktop units as the most popular personal computer type. Over the past couple of years, more powerful mobile CPUs and GPUs have made lighter weight laptops prime candidates to become the machines of choice for pro graphics and NLE users too.

While they didn’t have a booth on the show floor, Dell still garnered interest by the introduction of two potent new members of its line of pro-oriented, ISV-certified mobile workstations, which turned up on display in Intel’s and NVIDIA’s booths.

The 15.4-inch Dell Precision M4400 runs Intel Extreme Edition processors, NVIDIA Quadro FX 770M graphics, up to 8GB of memory, and 7200RPM 320GB storage capacity with a “free fall” sensor. The 14.1-inch M2400, meanwhile, has similar specs, but uses a slightly less potent graphics processor from NVIDIA, the Quadro FX 370M. The nice part here—at just 4.77 lbs, the M2400 is Dell’s lightest mobile workstation.

If you can wait a bit, however, you might want to check out a real showstopper from the company—a 17-inch, quad core “concept” mobile workstation that offers a sleek, red anodized aluminum body that follows Dell’s recent push to use good design to separate its product line from everyone else.

During a small breakfast meeting, Dell engineers and product managers proudly pointed out the device’s smooth body, which had not a single sticker to mar it, even on the bottom (although Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows sticker will probably mar that at shipping time). Meanwhile, only two small screws appeared discretely on the back of the case. Looks like Steve Jobs is continuing to have his design presence felt.

The laptop—which still doesn’t have an official model number or ship date—will be able to support an astonishing 16GB RAM memory, while shipping with two drives that can be made into a RAID. It will also feature an even more powerful new generation of NVIDIA mobile graphics, as well as innovations such as a mouse pad that can do double duty as a jog shuttle for editing video.