It came standard with a 15-inch SXGA (1400 x 1050 pixels) display that could be upgraded to the UXGA (1600 x 1200) or the UltraSharp UXGA (1600 x 1200). The memory came standard at 256 MB RAM (expandable to 1 GB RAM).

The Dell Inspiron 8200 was equipped with two standard RAM expansion slots for notebook computers. The Inspiron came standard with a DVD-ROM drive (expandable to a DVD/CD-RW) and a 1.44-inch removable floppy drive. The video card options were nVidia GeForce2 Go graphics card with 32 MB RAM or could be upgraded to an nVidia GeForce 4 Go 440 with 64 MB RAM, an ATI Radeon 9000 Mobility graphics card with 64 MB RAM, or the Quadro4 700 GL, a professional GL -enhanced notebook equivalent of the desktop-based Geforce4 4200 Go.