Dell laptop charges without wires
MAKER OF GREY TIN BOXES, Dell has released a laptop that doesn't need to be plugged into the mains to be recharged.
The Dell Latitude Z is placed in a docking station that does not directly plug into the machine. The docking station is like the one you have for your toothbrush.
It is being touted as 'wireless charging', which it is not really, but that makes for a good headline. You'll also need to spend about $400 for the special toothbrush friendly docking hub.
Dell has dubbed the machine the world's thinnest and lightest 16-inch laptop, at 4.5 pounds and less than one inch thick.
As you would expect, the Latitude Z is not light on price. That is because it is being targeted at what Dell calls "impression makers".
These are executives in corporates who have huge expense accounts. The Latitude Z starts at $1,999 and it will probably sit in impression makers' brief cases and never be switched on because they won't know how.
The Latitude Z comes with an instant-on function that allows quick access to the Internet. It has a screen frame that is touch-sensitive and can be used to launch applications and scroll through webpages.
Its 16-inch screen is a high-definition 1600x900 WLED display but it can't do 1080p, unfortunately. The Dell machine also has a two megapixel camera featuring Dell Capture technology that allows users to scan and save business cards to Microsoft Outlook contacts and copy documents.
What is interesting is that the press release and subsequent coverage are decidely short on details about what is under the bonnet. While the design owes a lot to Apple so does the implied relevance of what is inside the ultrathin computer case.
After some digging we have found that the notebook runs on a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It has 2GB of memory, can have up to two 265GB hard drives, and features a multi-touch trackpad that supports pinch and zoom.
As we found buried in an ARM press release, it turns out that the Dell Latitude Z also has a second ARM chip to run Linux applications. The big idea is that if you want to boot your machine in a hurry to see your email or have a quick chat on Skype, you just use the ARM chip. While this might sound like a great idea, we think it will hardly ever be used.
Other interesting features include the touchscreen display. Slide your fingers vertically along the frame and a tool bar will pop up that lets you choose email, photos and camera functions. µ
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Any new Asus boards come with Express Gate which will do exactly the same thing, give you instant access to web, email, picture editing, etc. Obviously the drawback to this is it doesn't support SATA yet so you have to boot from a USB Drive. Booting from my 16GB OCZ Dual-Channel Rally takes about 10 seconds. That sounds fast, but considering that if you let the mobo finish loading the RAID controller in POST Windows 7 boots in 6 seconds off my Kingston SSD. Either way it boots fast and I don't need an ARM.
With the radiation this charger will put out, you'll have a few growing out the side of your head in no time.
Having ARM chips in laptops is really a failure of Intel's software marketing machine. Glenn is right - no reason main Intel proc couldn't quickly boot into an OS (slow boot times are really Microsoft's fault), but apparently the software to make this work is more mature on Arm. The concern for Intel is that this 'foot in the door' for Arm will result in Arm going from secondary to only CPU (at least for lower-end devices that don't need to run Windows).
So Dell just solved a problem that didnt exist. I have to press a button to undock my Dell laptop im given for work. oooh aww Maybee im synical but I just dont get the point.
Anyone with half a brain that is going to spend $2,000 on a laptop would go for the fastest SSD and boot speeds will be very fast for Win XP or Win 7. Anyone stupid enough to buy this laptop for the looks most certainly wont use the ARM to boot into.
When did making computers cool surpass making them better?
I'm sure the ARM sucks up a lot less power than the C2D. It's along the same idea as nVidia's hybrid graphics.
Boot off the integrated Intel GPU if you're just doing work... switch to the GeForce mobile chip to play games.
duh, people
Hybrid power (from nvidia) doesn't work with intel integrated video chips, it ONLY works on the latest boards with nvidia integrated chips and with 9800GTX or newer video cards.
That said it works well, saving power that would otherwise be wasted as merely heat.
The other reason to use an ARM chip in these, while your running the integrated linux on the ARM the C2D could be booting windows, but I doubt Dell would be that smart about it.