Michael Sainsbury | August 13, 2008
DELL will offer users the chance to sidestep Windows painfully slow boot time as well as boost battery time on laptops with a new email, contacts and internet browsing system that by-passes the main operating system of the computer.
Branded Dell Latitude ON, the system uses a dedicated low-voltage sub-processor and operating system the company said can enable multi-day battery life.The world’s biggest maker of personal computers has also launched its lightest ever computer, a 12.1 inch screen laptop weighing only 1 kg and has stretched the battery life on one of its new range of laptops to 19 hours as part of fresh product batch launched in India today.
Dell has also signaled that it will bring a handheld “netbook” computer into the market later this year, a small, light, no frills laptop similar to Asus best selling Eee PC that will come with a price tag of about $600. But the company has no plans at this stage to move into the mobile phone/palm computing market.
The moves are the latest in an aggressive new strategy mapped out by founder Michael Dell who returned to head up the company last year after it faltered in the face of stronger competition form rivals, especially HP.
“Since 1995, we’ve shipped more business laptops worldwide than anyone,” Mr Dell said in Delhi this afternoon. “This, and our 5 million plus conversations a day with customers, gives us real insight into the needs of the digital nomad. Today we’re translating that insight into breakthrough productivity, portability and design.”
Mr Dell’s return appears to be working with improved sales and share price emerging over the past quarter.
Laptops sales have now outstripped sales of desktop computers and in the past 18 months the market has been boosted by the widespread availability of mobile broadband which can offer faster speeds than fixed line high-speed internet services in some areas. The service is now also at least as cheap as fixed wire broadband with all operators reporting booming sales and no sign of a slowdown.
Laptops have become market focus for the company and Mr Dell has re-organised the business around five main groups: consumer business, mobile computers, emerging countries, enterprise, and small/medium business.
Dell has also taken aim at the desktop replacement market with e new laptops range that it claims doubles the amount of memory and processor cores, and triples the storage available on products from rivals HP and Lenovo with a also introduced a 17-inch mobile workstation concept. The unit supports up to 16 GB of RAM, a 1 GB graphics card, soon to be released quad-core processors and up to a terabyte of storage on two drives.
The company has launched a new community site called Digital Nomads designed for laptop users to get together online to “share ideas, tips, tricks and best practices”.
The Dell Latitude E6400 and E6500, available today, are 14.1- and 15.4-inch laptops that start at AUD$1,783 and AUD$1,871 or NZD$2,374, respectively. The Latitude E5400, a 14.1-inch notebook, starts at AUD$1,591, and the E5500, a 15.4-inch notebook starts at AUD$1,613 or NZD$2,054.
Michael Sainsbury traveled to India as guest of Dell.