The answer is simple: It can be inexpensive if it's really meant to replace a small shared living room PC, not compete with high-powered gaming systems like the or the . Under the hood it's just a regular old cheap-ish all-purpose machine that has no discrete graphics card.

Our review model sports an Intel Core i5-3210M processor--a dual-core CPU running at 2.5GHz (3.1GHz in turbo mode)--and a rather small 3MB shared L3 cache. It's also equipped with 6GB of RAM, a 750GB hard drive, a DVD-RW optical drive, and built-in Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. The 17.3-inch LCD panel offers 1600 by 900 native resolution, and relies on Intel's integrated HD graphics, which means it's not quite a multimedia powerhouse. OS chores are handled by the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

In s WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the Inspiron 17R-1316MRB scored a below-average 86 out of 100. This means the Inspiron 17R is 14 percent slower than our baseline model, which sports a second-generation Intel i5 desktop processor and 8GB of RAM. This score is particularly low for the desktop replacement category. In fact, it's safe to say that while the Inspiron 17R may look the part of a desktop replacement, given its hulking, 17.3-inch size, it's nowhere near the league of most desktop replacements we've reviewed recently.

For example, the Alienware M17x R4 scored 146 on PCWorld's WorldBench 7, while the Samsung Series 7 Gamer scored 123. Sure, the Asus G75VW scored just 97, but remember that all three of these laptops are much more impressive than the Dell in ways other than WorldBench 7 performance score. In other tests the Inspiron 17R really showed its weaknesses--it scored 1627 in our office productivity tests, which is nowhere near the 6045 that the category leader, the , scored. In our Web performance tests, it managed 13.5 frames per second (the Origin managed 21.3).