Dell's dropping a ton of new laptops on us today, and first up are the new Latitudes. Just like
we'd heard, the E series is replacing the Ds, with seven new models total. As you
no doubt remember from our
Week o' Dell Scoops, the E6500, E6400, E5500, and E5400 are the traditional models with 15.4 and 14.1-inch displays, while the E4400 and E4200 are ultraportables and the previously-leaked
E6400 ATG is a ruggedized edition. The 12-inch E4200 is the lightest corporate laptop Dell's ever made, at just 2.2 pounds, while the 13.3-inch E4200 comes in a 3.4 pounds. Both feature Latitude ON, which allows you to access data without fully booting the machine -- sounds a lot like
SplashTop to us. Dell's claiming that the batteries on the larger machines can last for up to 19 hours, which sounds great, but we'll believe it when we see it. The new models also have an available backlit keyboard, and can be outfitted with dual pointing devices, fingerprint readers, and WWAN options including WiMAX.
Update: Dell just told us that Latitude ON is not based on SplashTop, but is a different embedded Linux solution.
posted August 12th 2008 12:18PM
these are way better than the D620 my company issued
Niiiiiiice, hopefully this can replace my company issued D420 with 3.5 hours of battery life.
Direct2Dell has some videos up
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/08/12/new-dell-latitude-notebooks_3A00_-no-more-business-as-usual.aspx
as well as..... ?
Sorry about the double post but this is quite interesting
"Another cool option that will be available on both the Latitude E4200 and E4300 in the coming months is something called Dell Latitude ON. It is an application that gives you access to your e-mail, contacts, calendar, attachments and the Internet without the need to boot into the system's main OS. The Dell Latitude ON mode will enable multi-day battery life since it utilizes a dedicated low-voltage sub-processor and operating system. I'll share more specifics on this feature in the future"
What a shady way to claim "19 hours" of battery life.
Videos and pages regarding the E-series seem to be disappearing. The link on Dell's main page doesn't work, and the first video at the read link is no longer available
Basically, this is just Microsft's Sideshow, but on a larger scale. Well, at least one company is using this idea.
These sure look sweet compared to my work issued D620 that I'm stuck with for 2 more years.
19 hours of battery life.... hmmmmm
Will the offer it with an operating system that can reliably last 19 hours, or are the going to straddle these with Windows anyway?
too bad Windows works for most people. Vista hasn't even crashed except for driver issues that have already been fixed months ago.
Vista hasn't crashed/blue-screened on me in over 6 months when i had just installed and not yet updated my drivers.
i don't get why people still think vista has these terrible problems. vista works great.
Vista has been crashing on me several times a week for 8 months that I used it until I had enough. I decided to call it quits when in a batch of 8 Microsoft updates back in April, one of them caused the machine to not boot any longer (BSOD during boot!) and the other disabled the entire mouse subsystem, making it very difficult to get it fixed. I suppose P35 chipset and 8800GT graphics are considered exotic nowdays, not to mention the - gasp! - two-drive raid array running on elusive and exotic Intel Matrix Raid bios. Yeah, 64 bit and RAID are such bleeding edge emerging technologies, I should not have expected any better.
/sarcasm
Andrew, if you were having problems a while ago, the 64 bit may have been your problem. by this point 64 bit support has improved drastically, so you could probably give it another go and be satisfied. but honestly, very few programs are compiled for 64 bit, so i don't why you'd even want it. i bet you'd be happy with the 32 bit version. then again, maybe not, since based on your comments you seem to be a very angry person.
and to your comment on looks below, it's a matter of opinion if people think they look nice. you're word isn't fact. get over yourself. besides, these laptops are built to be solid and funtional (latitudes are famous for their durability), not looks.
@ Andrew: lawl, I have all of those things, to the letter, and mine doesn't crash. update your bios?
So, none of theses notebooks are the netbooks leaked a couple of months ago?
The ultraportable one is quite nice...but probably way out of my price range.
I was really looking forward to the announcement of some Dell netbooks, but alas...
unfortunately these machines are old school thinkpad fugly. That was first response to my dell account manager when she brought them in last week.
"unfortunately these machines are old school thinkpad fugly."
Bullshit. The design is clean and professional. They are BUSINESS laptops. They don't have to look "cool", or be white.
If you are one of those "form over function" guys, get an Apple.
@Brandon: What niz said.
They ARE ugly. You can downrank him all you want, it's the truth. They are plain ugly black business laptops, looking thin being the only thing going for them. Why should business laptops be black anyway? A lot of people don't wear suit and tie any more, why should laptops be this conservative? Are they marketed to catholic priests or something?
Its not just black, the E4200 will also be in "Regatta Blue," "Regal Red" and "Quartz Pink" in the coming weeks.
Though comments on Apple posts are usually quite amusing to read, the whole 'Apple sucks' camp is getting rather old and annoying. I've been enjoying doing work on Apples for 10+ years now, getting form AND function out of my computers. Sure for a while I wasn't a big fan of MS, and certain practices of theirs I despise (IE6 being my #1 gripe as a web designer/developer), but I get the fact that many people still love MS over all others and I can validate that just as much as I can Apple.
Fact is, get over it, call a spade a spade and realize we're all here because we're geeks who love gadgets. This doesn't let Apple fanbois off the hook either (ahem, Zak) as they make all of us Apple users look bad as well.
Brandon didn't mention Apple, and why in this day & age can't we ask for form as well? Sony and other computers have done some interesting things with design, so I don't think it's too much to ask for especially when dropping a grand or two (you don't buy ugly cars too, do you?). With that, these Dells aren't terrible considering, and even kinda like em.
Because black is the new black as is always has been...It goes with everything. It's also won't distract people from your powerpoint presentations like say..jelly bean green or cherry or whatever the flavour of the month is.
This looks just like my company issued HP Compaq nc4200.
I used to like Dell, but working on these HP's for the last several years has made me appreciate the quality of HP laptops. These things are solid.
An E4200, please!
just what i've been waiting for. Been ready to pick up an XPS 1330, but now am waiting for the even lighter and more powerful E4200.
just what i've been waiting for. Been ready to pick up an XPS 1330, but now am waiting for the even lighter and more powerful E4200.
? these are much better than previous models
I wonder how these will stack up against Lenovo's Thinkpads. Its pretty clear they are going after the same market with these new Latitudes.
Hot! I just wish I wasn't going to have to shell out ~$2350 for the E6400 config that I want...
i'm still waiting on the 'netbooks'. Dell is taking their sweet time on releasing those to the point of being ridiculous with the timeline. are they worried about cannabalizing back-to-school sales? i have a fully-loaded XPS1210 with an extended batter, and despite it not being huge like my brother's 17" screen laptop behomoth, i really want one of the 8.9" mini-lappies for j-school which starts 1st Monday of 2nd week of September. talk about cutting it close.
yesterday i saw an Acer Aspire One in the wilds (at a Starbucks in Toronto, Canada), and persuaded user to let me touch it. i asked for the store name where he bought it and found they had some left stock for 350/375 bucks for linux, and 400/425 for win xp (what i consider the 'right price' for this sort of thing). knowing it was a street car ride away, it was really tough not to go and pick one up today.
still, if Dell makes me wait much longer, might go with the Aspire anyway. Sapphire Blue.
Sooo... where do I order one?
The 19 hours are accomplished by a battery pack add-on that the Latitude would sit on. You won't be able to dock it with the battery slice on. Either Dell or Lenovo is already doing it. It will cost you though!
I've decided not to wait for the Dell netbook. Since the Redfly price droped to $399, I'm picking this up to use with my Sprint Touch. All I ready want is a larger screen and keyboard to use with my phone without adding additional monthly charges.
i think you got a typo there: "while the 13.3-inch E4200 comes in a 3.4 pounds" - it is probably E4300 (E4200 got 12'')
15" models with configurable with up to 1440x900 screen resolution. what the fuck am i supposed to do with that? the new thinkpads are just as bad.
OMG! WIMAX on it, now thats something worth to buy, dell and hp, the best.....
This is a laptop Envy owners would envy
Has anyone even seen the Sony Vaio Z Series? full 1080p, 3.4lbs, 2.53Ghz Penyrn, SSD, and the best feature, Blu-Ray disc read/write drive.
you may argue that thats not a work computer and your probably right. but it can probably do a good job at that too.
Very disappointing. I was going to upgrade my D-Series, but I can't get past the hideous HP-esque look (despite the brushed metal). What really turned me off was that all the ports are on the side (at least on the E6500, I didn't bother checking the others). No thanks.
Dell has to get its head of its ass on the pricing of the E-Series.
The D630 was a workhorse and with our corporate rate we could get them down to $1100 each loaded. Equal model in E-Series with our discount was $19xx.
No thanks Dell. They have a month to understand or we're running to HP.
(1) USB port. idiots.
3 USB Ports, not 1. And you only put parenthesis around numbers when they follow the spelling...
i.e. Three (3)