This article is meant to give you a broad outline of the Dell Laptops that you can buy. After that, you should consult their website for more specifics.

Scope and brands

As you probably can tell, Dell laptops come under many different brand names. Dell has traditionally done this to market different brand-labels to different business and consumer segments:

• Business Class laptops: This class of laptops emphasizes long life-cycles, reliability and serviceability. The thought is that businesses, especially larger corporations, need to justify their purchases by showing an adequate return on investment.
  • Dell N-Series - Laptops shipped with Linux or FreeDOS installed
  • Vostro - for small-business customers
  • Latitude - for corporate customers
  • Precision - high-performance laptops

• Home/Consumer Class laptops: This class of laptops emphasizes value, performance and expandability. This is not to say that homeowners don't care about return on investment. Rather, they are focused more on the initial price, look and feel of a laptop.
  • Inspiron - consumer laptop systems
  • XPS - high-performance laptop

Dell also offers "bare-bones" versions of certain of their laptop brands (N series by default and by request on XPS and Inspiron systems). These come without pre-installed software and at significantly lower prices. Dell ships these systems with a "FreeDOS disk" included in the box. The customer is expected to install all the software (including the operating system).

Lastly, they must issue a so-called "Windows refund" or a merchandise credit after the sale of the system, which is at the "regular" retail price.

Due to Dell's licensing-contract with Microsoft, Dell doesn't offer those systems on their website. Instead, customers have to know enough to ask for them.

I hope this clears up any confusion about the myriad Dell laptop brands. As I said, feel free to consult Dell's website for more information.