Dell unveils new Latitude E-Series laptops

15-08-2008

by Emmet Ryan

Dell launched its new Latitude E-Series of laptops on Monday and ENN's cameras were there to see what all the fuss was about.

The 19-hour battery life claim of the new laptop range comes with one monumental caveat attached. Only 10 of those hours are delivered by the standard battery. To soup up to 19 hours users need to add a battery slice, an add-on affixed to the base of the laptop, which extends overall battery life.

On top of the features revealed in the video, Dell also announced it would launch a new feature called Latitude ON in November. The service is essentially the equivalent of the standard standby function on a laptop, only with a whole pile of performance enhancing drugs.

Latitude ON will enable users to skip booting up an operating system in order to gain access to functions such as e-mail and the internet. Much like standby, it operates on the concept that users don't power off computers; however, Latitude ON, unlike the standby function, claims to enable multi-day usage. This would reduce the frequency with which users need to charge or boot up their laptops.

It wasn't all good news from the E-Series launch. Dell has hinted in recent months that the launch of a UMPC (ultra mobile pc) device was imminent. All the firm's chief marketing officer could say at the event in London however was to "watch this space". It's hardly the most encouraging message he could have relayed.