The Dumbest Laptop DELL Ever Made - Dell XPS m2010

I have to say, I'm completely in favor of more videos like this that cover old hardware like this. With Linus' extensive knowledge of old tech and his regular propensity for dad jokes and dropping things, it's equally informative and entertaining.

I worked at Dell when these were released. The bluetooth was notorious for breaking. We were also strictly forbidden from referring to these as laptops so people wouldn't hurt themselves and then sue.

I'd like to see you guys make this into a sleeper monster machine, i mean, imagine rolling up to an Esports tournament and walking in with this absolute unit.

I was working at Dell when these came out. They were hell in the lab, because the keyboards and mice would happily connect with ANY XPS in the lab in preference to the closest one. You'd try to set one up, and suddenly someone across the lab is typing on your screen. Fortunately you could hard-wire the keyboards and use a wired mouse, but it was a pain.

I worked in a laptop repair role for awhile back in the day and this was probably one of my favorite devices to work on because it was so easy to disassemble lol Great video guys!

Prior to buying Alienware in 2006, Dell's "XPS" was their gaming and premium PC line. Dell wanted to bridge the gap between laptop and desktop usage and this was born from their efforts. The goal was to provide the biggest gaming monitor possible along with desktop horsepower while still being portable enough to lug around like a laptop(-ish). Last time I saw this was in Iron Man (2008), when Pepper was going through Tony's computer.

They were 17 years ahead of their time. I was literally talking about this yesterday. A desktop PC that is portable now that people are working from home and the office. It literally saves each employee needing 2 workstations.

As a Dell field engineer around the time when this was released, when I first encountered this at a client site I experienced a significant medical event.

Given how good the screen is and speaker setup, i'd be interested what internals they could put inside or outright replace to make a "modern take" on it.
Use the chassis (with minor modifications), bang in a new Mobo, M.2, Li-on pack etc etc so make a sleeper PC.

Built in dial up modem actually makes a ton of sense on this thing if it was really meant as a portable workstation that may be used out "in the field" alongside equipment using dialup for small data transfers.

I think this is actually quite a revolutionary system for its time, it implements futuristic elements and ergonomics with handy features and sleek styling.

You should have upgraded the ram with 8GB and placed the best CPU compatible for that socket/motherboard. Those old CPU's are SUPER CHEAP and sometime a huge upgrade depending on what's already installed. You could make this into one hell of an emulator PC.

This laptop was my dream computer back in high school. I ran through the Dell configurator and put together a sick setup that would have only cost a whopping $10k!
Also, fun fact, this laptop was featured in Iron Man, when Pepper Potts was copying the files off of Obadiah Stane's Dell XPS m2010.

That casing actually might have been magnesium alloy, I’ve taken apart some older laptops from that era before and it looked the same, if you look on the exposed metal you should see a “Mg” symbol, that means it’s Magnesium, some of the laptops I had actually were dead so I burned small pieces of the magnesium casing and it creates a Blinding White/Greenish White light, if anyone wants to do this, make sure you have eye protection, because burning magnesium also emits UV Rays

It actually looks like a cool concept for a "portable" all-in-one. Which would suit businesses for desk moves, etc. But certainly not something to use practically as a laptop.

Man, this takes me back to my dad’s old Toshiba laptop; 18lbs, 2” thick. Truly amazing history - please make more of these!

Wow. What a throwback. In 2006, I was trying to decide between this and the M1710. I went with the 17 because it had better specs for gaming and would actually fit (barely) in my laptop backpack. It weighed a ton, but the screen was amazing! I used that laptop for at least a decade. If it had a 64bit processor, I’d still probably be using it to this day. My version had an Nvidia card but I remember those fans and the massive heat sink piping. Good times!! Good gaming, too!

i had one and i loved working with it. i love big displays and i had a second 21“ screen attached at the office. also the keyboard was great to type on. i threw mine away last year … fully functional … oops! mainly because that fake leather finish turned into that sticky plastic over the years and it was gross to touch it. it also came with a custom fit laptop bag … with wheels and a retractable handle. a truly unique piece of tec … :)

I really appreciate the length and pacing of this video. It doesn't feel rushed like other videos sometimes do. Too often it feels like Linus is just trying to get done with the video as quickly as possible, without taking time to actually "have fun" with whatever thing they're doing. I've always watched LTT primarily because of the "fun" aspect.

My friend got one of these and it was awesome. I got to borrow for a couple of weeks just to play around with it. It was super awesome not gonna lie. The one thing I hated was over time that rubber coating on the outside was super sticky. Regardless, I like to see outrageous tech like this and really enjoyed this one.

I think a modern version of this would rock. With the popularity of working from home, I think a transportable workstation could do pretty well (as long as it was somewhat affordable).

I used to have a compaq laptop and the upgrade batteries for it had capacity indicators on them because, among me and my peers anyway, having multiple batteries back then was pretty common and chargers that could charge your battery external to the laptop were a thing I remember a few of us having too lol. Treating your laptop like a power tool "yeah AFK I gotta change my battery" lmao

I wanted the m2010 so bad growing up, then by the time I had that kind of money to spend there were infinitely better laptops out there. That's some nostalgia right there lol

Imagine if the laptop companies started bringing back "luggable" form factor computers like the portables of the 80s, this is about what I'd imagine they'd look like

I'm not gonna lie. I really want an updated version

I would love to see someone take one of these and completely “custom hotrod” modernize this thing.
Keep the entire exterior aesthetic, but start to finish make it more of a monster than Alex’s laptop.
And FORCE Alex to daily drive it.

It would be interesting to see a video about upgrading this ‘laptop’ and installing windows 10 to see what it’s capable of when it’s maxed out. Although I understood from the video that finding parts for it is a problem. I still hope you make a follow up video though.

It would be nice to have a similar form factor for a modular notebook. Middle ground between a notebook and a monoblock all-in-one pc's.

actually one of the best designs ive seen. this is actually a fantastic design and could probably be made very high end with still fantastic cooling with proper redesigning.

I have a friend who lugs around his desktop to other's house when playing games with them instead of using a laptop.
Something like this seems perfect as, like you said, it's essentially a portable desktop.
It would be amazing if someone made a suitcase sized desktop, handle and all just like this, but with modern hardware to make it truly into a full gaming computer.
Of course, it would probably have to be a custom build...., but having all those speakers, sub-woofer too would just be the icing on the cake when you show it off.

I would love to see a video where Alex and team attempt to make this a modern sleeper while keeping as many core unique components as possible!

Great video guys! Interesting to see Dells bold innovation back then. You totally read my mind replacing thermal paste and running Crysis! I remember in 2007 running Crysis under Vista using a Asus A8N-sli Athlon X2 4200+ 8800GTS. I had to manually disable all non essential Windows tasks in taskmanager to get tollarable performance! Vista had so many! In 2008 I added a second GPU and it killed my PSU! A new 700W PSU got me back up and running with pretty good performance for the time. It improved with each driver and patch updates. Microsoft made it so you had to upgrade to Vista to be able to play it using Directx10!
It'll be interesting to see how Crysis runs under XP on that laptop using Directx 9 or with an XP DirectX 10 mod.
Thanks again for another great video!

This thing's build quality reminds me of my old M6400 Covet Workstation (anodized orange with full sRGB screen). There was a time when Dell's high-end workstation laptops were absolute beasts!

This is actually a great design at the wrong price for consumers. I would have bought this back in university (if powerful enough) as I wanted to easily travel back and forth to my parent's place for the weekends and bring that along.

I want a modern version of this. I think Microsoft could make an insane version of this.

Man i miss laptop CPU sockets. My Dell Latitude had one too and i liked the idea that i could get a better CPU for it some day. I don't think i ever did because the screen hinge broke before i even got to that stage, but it was nice to know it could be done.

I had this computer (fully-loaded) and it was a dream! It's not a laptop, it's a portable desktop with a real screen enabling massive productivity from anywhere... with a table. I'd buy this again without hesitation if there was a modern version of this...

I almost bought one of these back in the day... decided I didn't want something THAT heavy, but man was I disappointed when I used one that a friends dad had got through his work. In the day and running ATI Black drivers, think that is what they were called could be wrong, the thing was AMAZING to play or watch things on. Between the awesome monitor & the sweet sound. It was the monitor that got me into Glossy laptop screens. This was a great video. LOVED IT!

You guys should make this into a modern laptop. It's a huge undertaking but a huge project that LTTT could probably do now.
Been watching since 2010. Love your stuff guys. I miss scrapyard wars.

It's like they baked a soundbar into that thing! I remember I used to have a dell soundbar that mounted under a monitor, and that thing had arguably some of the best sounding PC speakers I've ever heard.

I would love to see you guys making a sleeper out of this with modern laptop parts. Like put a framework in it or something :D

How did Dell go from this level of repairability to where they're at now? This is incredible

HP made a similar product to this way back when called the HP Pavilion HDX. It was more laptop-y and less AIO-y but still had a similar display mechanism situation.

I would like to see Dell or another company have a go at building a modern version of one of these. With more efficient parts, lighter screens and all round better hardware, executed well, this concept could actually work.

Ahh good times of replacing CPUs in laptops - done that a few times and it can certainly give a new lease on life to an old rig. Took an old HP and swapped a Celeron P4600 for an i5-580M, went from 2GB to 8GB DDR3 and a 160GB 5400rpm HDD to a 1TB SSD, slapped in a USB 3.1 ExpressCard/54 and it actually runs Windows 10 pretty acceptable to this day.

I used to drool over these in the dell magazines my parents let me look through when I was young. These and the XPS M1710. There was no way I could afford either one as a 13 y/o, but I did recently buy an M1710 to make a sleeper out of. Also a bit rare, some coming in at over $600 in working condition.

This laptop must be the most awesome mobile device I've ever seen! I mean, for a system of 2006 or so, it has so many features and was built pretty well :)

A modern version of this would be wild! You could fit so much battery, crazy sound and just epic parts in a formfactor like this today to make an actaully useful computer. Maybe nobody needs anything like that today since laptops are so good anyway but still. Just imagine how awesome a modern version of this could be.

I enjoyed your video. It’s fun to see extreme computers like that. Keep up the good work guys.

I'd love to see things like this still being made

We had one of these at my first real IT job after Geek Squad. I loved the beast but ended up having to manually modify the INF file of the latest ATI driver to get the GPU to detect properly. No issues after that.

I wonder if you could throw some of the framework laptop hardware into the chassis to make this thing more capable. Like motherboard/cpu, ram, m.2, etc. All of those components are so much smaller i feel like there is a way to make that work.

Wow, this brings back to much memories. I actually owned one of these back in the days. I was working for Dell at the time, and we got lease these through a employee purchase program.
Anyhow, I really loved mine, even as a gaming machine. You say it was business focus, but you have to remember that this predates the days of Alienware being Dells gaming products, and XPS was still aimed primarily at gamers. It was as close as you'd could get to a Windows iMac AIO at the time.

This is the coolest video you've done in a while, what an epic laptop! More obscure tech please! Also felt the perfect length and not a rushed shoot like some videos have felt recently.

That form factor would be awesome if it could come with a replaceable parts and good thermals.

I have the HP version of this! It's very similar in weight and size, but no detachable keyboard or dvd player, instead it has a built in TV tuner and detachable TV remote. Would love to see LTT do a comparison between the two.

While I liked how they were kinda making fun of this ancient machine, i also think its incredible when companies just try stuff for the sake of trying something new.
Very entertaining video

I literally asked Dell a few years ago if they ever planned making an upgraded, modern version of this beauty. Unfortunately, no plans...
Still I'm surprised there hasn't been a gaming variant of this in recent years.

FINALLY! have been waiting for this video. glad your enjoying the machine, glad it found a super useful second life. and to think i got it at an electronics liquidation auction in a lot… same place i found wii U dev kits xD
thanks for the demo, and super stoked it worked out, was cool chatting with your procurement team and glad it made it to you safe and in one piece :p
YAS I SOLD IT TO THEM AND IT MADE ME HAPPY :3

We had these in the company I worked for in 2006. They were awesome at the time. They were basically desktop replacements and we used them for working from home and for working in the office. Which was on a 3/2 day home/office split. They were ridiculously heavy to lug around though.

I would love to see your guys make that thing a performance unit!

Man this really brings back memories of when I started university. I couldn't afford an M2010 obviously, but the laptop I did have also had a lot of the features - ExpressCard, TV tuner, IR remote, 15 inch 1680x1050 screen that dumped on the 1280x800 resolution laptops of the time, and so much more. I even upgraded the socketed Merom Core 2 Duo CPU to a Penryn and put in a Crucial M4 128GB SSD which was one of the first affordable SSDs that didn't have that horrible JMicron controller. I remember blowing away my dorm mates with how fast it booted Windows from cold. Aside from the mildly anaemic Nvidia 8600M GT that struggled with Crysis, it was the perfect laptop for a geeky student. Battery life was 3 hours when new, but barely an hour at the end of its life.
The other thing I remember is that CNET UK did a review of the Dell M2010 where the reviewer tried to lug it around on the London Underground, which was not only tricky but also tiring.

I had one of these, and absolutely loved it, except for the 7 months in the first 3 years when it wasn't useable. When it was working, it was amazing, but I had issues with the Motherboard 4 times in the first 3 years. In Dell's defence, they ended up replacing it with an Alienware Laptop that lasted me over 7 years.

I had a bunch of top of the line Dell laptops in the 00s and despite their awful modern day reputation, they built easy to open/clean and modular practical laptops that worked. And yes I would have went IBM Thinkpad if I had the money as a student but Dell to my surprise worked out well plus when ordering multiple devices with friends, sales people would often give discounts of 500€ per unit.

I would have loved to have a machine like this back when I lived with my grandma, I would stay with my mom over the weekend and live at my grandmas place during the week (grandmas place was closer to work and I didn't have a car yet). The price and specs were definitely a no-go but I can see the potential. I almost never put my laptop actually on my lap, I'd always use a table and desk of some sort so weight wasn't an issue (in fact I killed my battery because I also always had it plugged in). I basically use my laptop as a portable desktop.

I had one of those back in the day. This was the best computer I ever had. The fact that it was a "transportable" device with such a big screen made it super nice to use. I've travel the world with it for my work and it was always priceless to see the custom officers scanning it with xray and stop me because it was such a weird briefcase full of electronics components. Even in the handle there was chips and cables.

I really like that machine to be fair, like I would have one. I wonder how far you could up grade stuff, a ssd would be no problem. I wonder if you could upgrade the cpu, don't remember seeing the gpu so no idea on that. But with a ssd, windows 10, like there is some potential, be fun to tinker with.

Damn, I would absolutely buy this if I had enough money at the time. It's a chunky boy, but imagine the performance this could have if it was made nowadays!

I worked at Dell during this time and I remember thinking what a bad idea this was it was. It was supposed to be marketed to students who could use it for their dorm rooms as a laptop, desktop, and a tv. Code named Project Greenland. Makes sense

This whole video reminded me of my early PC days from learning Windows 3.1, 95, and 98. More trial and error and sleepless nights trying to get games or hardware working, and so many OS re-installs that I am scarred for life. Great video though! Thank you for the detailed steps that you guys show. Great job Linus on your success. Nice underwear BTW...👍

That Dell keyboard is super nostalgic. My Dad had an employee discount plan at his work for Dell PC’s, so all my childhood computers were from them. Seems like every one of them had a keyboard that looked just like that (and boy was it terrible).

This looks like it would be pretty fun to try and upgrade since it seems like so many of the parts are replaceable. I wonder what the most ballin' version of this thing would look like.

I called these "lugtops".its part luggable part laptop. This one of my favorite computers of all time. It really executed its job well. Please more HARDWARE ARCHEOLOGY :) you and Alex do this so well

Here is a random thought, could you gut that laptop and customize with more modernized hardware? I mean that hard drive swapped for a pcie m.2 ssd would add so much more space. Granted you'll need to find a way to get a laptop motherboard or something equivalent that can fit in that chasse.

I had a friend get this laptop in 2009. Instead of a multi card reader, it was a mouse Bay for a mobile built in mouse that clicked in and out. $4500 if I remember right

I used to own this monster luggable laptop. But I did do some customizations to it, because the video card would run into overheating issues. I sliced the BIOS and ran some extra wires internally to fix that issue. I also installed a digitizer to the display making it even more useful. And making it so I could externally charge the removeable keyboard so I didn't have to rely on the computer to do it, because the only way was to dock the keyboard to the laptop to charge it.

I love this thing ! Hey @LinusTech did you already tested the other biggest laptop ever? The Acer 9920G?
I had it 10yrs ago, i really loved it, si easy to upgrade, and its 20" screen was impressive at this Time.

Please keep making these retrospective videos! This is such an insane nostalgia hit for me right now. I vividly remember looking up articles and browsing Dell's website for this laptop back when I was in high school at the time it was released. You should see if you can find a listing somewhere for some of the old Voodoo PC laptops just so you can see why HP wanted to buy them out to turn them into their gaming laptop division before ultimately scrapping the name of the brand in favor of retaining the product line name instead. The Dell Adamo from around the same era was also an amazing example of a company trying to one-up Apple at their own game. Then they made the Adamo XPS and ruined everything in their endeavor to have the thinnest laptop.

I instantly loved everything about this laptop. Then I heard the name Dell Camino and I loved it even more. I hope to own one some day.

I had one. It has theft tracking capativity built in/installed if I remember correctly, some sort of theft protection. Very hard to troubleshoot as the technician had to come back to my home repeatedly to fix! Going thru airport TSA, they couldn't believe it was a laptop so I had to turn it on to show them. Because there weren't any carrying case available, I made my own padded should bag.

The only laptop with punchy Bass i have experienced myself, is the Alienware M14Xr2. That thing was pretty awesome! The GT555m was not the greatest though haha!

I really wish Dell would build an updated version of this machine. It was a beast and I loved it.

That laptop was awesome. It was a portable desktop. I wish they kept making more of them. Can you imagine how great it would be to have one of these with RGB, Nvida RTX 4070. would be the perfect portable gaming desktop.

Hm, I might have one of those Dell remotes lying around, or at least a version of it. I used to use the Gyration remotes with my HTPC years ago, and the problem is that the remotes didn't really last all that long. I can't recall what went on them, but it was usually the same thing. One time, I ended up going with a Dell variant with a custom (i.e., really janky) receiver. Pretty sure I still have some of the Gyration ones lying around too... I should see if they still work.

The XPS M2010 was on Tony Stark's desk in the original Iron Man film.
The second Mini PCIe slot is for an optional 3G Cellular card. Back then you had to pick your carrier and Dell didn't have cards available for every US carrier at the time.
The top panel cover I'm pretty sure is a die-cast alloy part and not machined. Hence the rough appearance. I never got to work on one when I was a warranty tech for Dell, but I did have to go over the service manual and take their little certification test on it.

If i remember right that easy access to removable modules (ram wifi ect) was a dell thing back then.. think a lot of their at least business laptops had a single panel for that sometimes you could pop the hdd out in one go too

I agree with much of what other people have said. I love this format of video reviewing old tech, but I would love to see what the folks in the workshop and lab could do with this to modernize is. Modern batteries, ssds’,max out the ram, maybe a higher res screen. Really let this thing rip!
I can dream can’t I?

Imagine this design refreshed for current tech... this is honestly the only Dell I ever actually wanted lol. A modernized version of this design would be a perfect candidate for some more extreme options, like slide out monitor panels to make it into a fully opperational battle station lol. And that's what it really would be... not really a take everywhere device, but not a mere desktop replacement either... it's a Nomadic Battle Station lol.

Okay, so as someone who was doing tier 1 IT support back when this thing came out, I would have loved to have these in our department rather than carting around full desktop and monitor setups. It's kind of like those massive "Mobile Workstation" laptops. It's not really a laptop, but rather a gaming setup you can take from one desk to another via a single backpack. I think it's a pretty neat concept.

I still have one of the 20" Acer versions of this style computer.
Over-expensive, and was a giant mistake I made back then... but I still have it.
It also had a TV tuner connector/card built in. I rarely used it tho. Ugh it's still painful to think I spent that much

Would love to see a recreation of this with modern specs

I would love to see what Linux could do on a system like this. That would be serious fun.

I see there are a bunch of former (or even present) Dell techs here. This was a monster when it was released. Not in terms of performance, but in terms of its physical footprint. The Bluetooth issues some of my former colleagues mentioned below are true. Weirdest experience of finding your keyboard and mouse connect elsewhere and some other keyboard and mouse connect to yours. Mike Dell went apoplectic when he read the reviews and early adopter reviews and wrote a scathing internal email about the design philosophy. It didn't sell a lot and technical support barely got any calls. I did take a call once about a broken hinge. Yes! Someone broke one of those gigantic all-metal hinges. The card reader could read everything from SD cards to CF Cards to anything else. Credit where it is due though. This thing supported every single piece of computer technology that existed in those days. Everything one could imagine or own. And lastly yes. That was a Blu-Ray drive. (There was a patch from Cyberlink and Sonic that enabled playback. The link is broken though. If I have a file, I'll post it and DM it)

I wish I could get my hands on that old dell for some of my own testing purposes. I love old tech like that.

I had one of these bad boys at uni back in the late 2000s. It was perfect for me doing animation as I would tilt the screen flat, put paper on it and trace scenes. I remember seeing it cameo in the iron man film too. Every now and then it would fault on start up and the error beeps were like a fire alarm. It stopped working and ended up in the bin. I miss it and the amount of muscle mass it gave me lugging it about.

I wonder how much it would cost to make a modern equivalent to this. Like considering the specs back then and updating them to the needs of today. It would be a really interesting experiment. And it would solve like a lot of problems. The device could be a portable laptop, a workstation, a media center like a Google home, it would be a good gaming laptop. Possibilities are endless. All in one but for real.

I wanted this thing so much when it first came out. If they released an updated version of this I'd probably still be interested.

They should make laptops like this now, I rarely actually moved my laptop, it was just easier to pack and transport than a desktop

I owned that laptop! It was amazing! Everyone made fun of me as I had an international job and took it with me. It was like carrying around your desktop computer that folded up into a briefcase. The airline checkpoint often made me turn it on to prove it was really a computer. Fun fact: it makes an appearance in the Get Smart movie. I got to say I totally loved that computer!

This reminds me of a Dell SmartPC 250N I still have at home. The problem is that it's Keyboard doesn't work properly and updating it to Linux just doesn't work, due to the USB (apparently)not working without having booted up the OS (Windows XP). I tried with an external keyboard and that's how I found out.
Edit: And it has a 40 GB IBM Travelstar HDD, which sounds like it's trying to kill itself.