Dell today introduced its stylish Precision M6400 quad-core "mobile workstation", the beefy specced desktop replacement it first talked about back in August.

It also debut a variant, the M6400 Covet, which is the one with the blazing orange aluminium cover.

Dell Precision M6400: covetable?

Both models are based on a 17in, 1920 x 1200 display - the covet has an edge-to-edge version, exclusively - with a three-colour LED backlight, though lesser screens can be selected instead. The top-of-the-line screen supports the full range of RGB colours as defined by Adobe.

Fiery hued

The machines use Intel's Q43 chipset, to which up to 16GB of 1067MHz DDR 3 memory can be connected. It also allows the M6400's two hard drives - up to 1TB of them - to be configured in a variety of RAID modes: 0 and 1 to be precise.

Yes, you can spec it up with a four-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 2.53GHz, 12MB L2 processor, but it'a also availe with two-core Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Extremes for those with smaller pockets.

Well connected

Two Nvidia Quadro FX graphics chips appear on the configuration sheet: the 2700M, with 512MB of dedicated video memory, and the 3700M with 1GB of VRam.

Expect all the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile broadband and UWB options, and there's both an ExpressCard 54 slot and a PC Card bay to add other periphperals. There's a six-pin Firewire port and four USB ports, one of which doubles up as an eSATA connector.

Full-size keyboard plus numeric pad

Need to connect an external monitor? Hook it up using the M6400's DisplayPort or VGA connectors. The Qwerty keyboard's joined by a separate numeric pad - together the two fill out almost all of the M6400's width. The touchpad has a printed scrollwheel "jog shuttle" that can tie into specific apps.

The weighty, from 3.88kg (with one HDD) machines come with a nine-cell "85Whr" battery. Operating system? Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS are the pre-load options.

The Dell Precision M6400 starts at £1479/€1809 and is available today. The M6400 Covet will be available by the end of the year, Dell said. The spec of the Covet has yet to be finalised.