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Dell's Inspiron i580 is best midrange desktop on the market, experts say

The Dell Inspiron i580 offers an excellent mix of value and performance for a midrange desktop PC, according to the tech reviewers at CNET.

While many of the midrange computers tested in CNET's review process came up notably short in one area or another, the Inspiron i580 was fairly strong across the board, particularly impressing the reviewers with its 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU. This allowed the Inspiron i580 to offer impressive performance for its midrange price point of $800.

Dell's more downmarket offerings, however, were not so lucky. CNET roundly panned the company's main budget desktop offering, the Inspiron i545. The reviewers were profoundly unimpressed by the computer's dated styling, sluggish performance, and curiously out-of-date input systems – the Inspiron i545 lacked connectivity options for FireWire or digital audio playback.

The poor press comes at an inopportune time for Dell, which has seen sales of its products slump at the same time that rival Acer has begun to capture larger and larger market segments. The company's days as second-fiddle to Hewlett-Packard could be numbered, analysts say.

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