Dell launches new range

 

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Posted on 25 Sep 2008 at 17:37

Dell made a number of announcements this week in Monaco as part of its new 'Mobility in the Connected Era' strategy. A new line of business notebooks was launched, some of which feature a new built-in privacy feature and 'Instant On'; the ability to bypass the operating system and get access to your information within seconds.

The one-touch privacy feature is available on the new Latitude E6400 business model. An extra LED light source in the screen is switched on via Dell's Control Point software and causes a white pattern to be displayed to viewers not directly in front of the screen. Dell claims that it has a minimal impact on the image quality for the laptop user. It is currently available as an £88 upgrade.

A new mini projector, the M109S was also shown, which weighs 360g and uses a Dell laptop power cord. It has a resolution of 858x600, a projection distance of nearly eight feet and a mercury-free LED light source that Dell claims will last up to four years.

The two new business laptops launched in Monaco were the ultra-portable, 12in Latitude E4200 and the Precision M6400 workstation laptop, weighing in at 4kg and featuring 64-bit Vista with quad-core processors and up to 16GB of memory. We also had our first look at the new Inspiron Mini 9 netbook, which has an Intel Atom N270 processor and 1GB of memory.

The 8.9in Mini 9 uses an 8GB SSD with Ubuntu Linux 8.04 installed, and has a claimed battery life of four hours. It includes a LAN port, VGA output, three USB ports, a memory card reader and audio ports, as well as a webcam built in above the screen. Dell will be selling a model without 3G, but will also be selling it through Vodafone on a contract basis with built-in 3G.

We had very little time to play with the Mini 9 but found the keyboard to be very awkward, with flat, closely-spaced keys and very short travel in the keys, giving little feedback to touch-typists. The touch pad was also very small and had a shiny surface rather than the more precise frictionless surface we would expect.

Dell also spoke about the amount of customisation they offer in terms of colours and designs. The launch of the new Studio line (see our upcoming Labs, issue 250) includes five unique artwork designs created by New York artist Mike Ming, although it emerged that less than 30,000 units of these models had shipped.

However a Dell spokesman said that Dell was keen to offer more personalisation, including the option to print company logos and even use snap-on lids with different designs.

Author: Barry de la Rosa