Dell’s taken a stab at the tablet market before, and waited two years to release a successor, but the newly announced Latitude XT2 looks worth the wait: a svelte, 12-inch swivelable widescreen with multi-touch capability.
The official ad makes day-to-day use of the XT2 look comically like using a humongous iPhone hacked to run Vista… an observation which is not meant nearly as pejoratively as it perhaps sounds. This looks like a sweet machine, but it’s very pricy: the XT2 starts at $2,399 and that’s with a 4-cell battery, with a 9-cell optional battery available for $199 more. But the guts of this thing are very juice-efficient: Dell’s claiming a possible eleven hour battery life.
You know, in all seriousness, Dell’s been making such good laptops lately, with such smart designs, I think I’m just about over feeling dirty everytime I write about them. They are making a great turn around and learning all the right lessons from Apple.
Here’s the specs:
• 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ULV SU9400 processor with Montevina chipset
• Intel integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics
• 12.1-inch LED backlit capacitive touch-screen with EM Digitizer pen
• Maximum of 5GB of DDR3 1066MHz (1x1GB, 1x4GB DIMM)
• 120GB 5400RPM SATA disk or 128GB SSD
• 3.78-pounds (1.72-kg) with 6-cell battery
• eSATA, 2x USB 2.0, firewire, and ExpressCard 54 slot
As usual in PC-land, there is not a single artistic use mentioned in this commercial. With a tool that has such obvious implications to artists, why do tablet engineers refuse to imagine tablets as anything more than “point of sale” tools? I mean really, is the contract-on-a-clipboard concept that hard to carry out? I’m an artist and animator who has owned a Asus R1F for almost two years now and I think it’s a great, if underdeveloped, portable artist’s studio. It took some work to whip into shape though, mainly because of the lack of vision of it’s creators. This is why there is a vocal crowd clamoring for a Mac tablet: they know that such a device will be created with artist’s and designers in mind.
Artists are more of a niche market than doctors and mortgage contract people?
Granted, apple’s getting a lot of milage out of that niche market.
You’re absolutley right, though- Dell is making better machines, but they don’t have the marketing machine around to break them out of the mass-market flyers or just sell it to the companies mindeset.
Passive or Active touch screen?
I need an active-digitizer or equivalent to use this as a sketchpad.
Anyone know how well this might act as a pressure sensitive tablet? Does it have a dual-mode screen?
I’m in love.
What I’d like to see is a EEE tablet – I’m guessing you could hack something out of a Sony PRS700 and a netbook (anyone want to donate the parts?), but it would be slow.
A tablet that you could put in your pocket, though…
Having said that, I’ve just googled “eee tablet”, and I see there are one or two. Just need to get them on the radar.
I’ve been using an HP TX2000-z for the better part of a year. I’ve owned several tablet PCs, and this is the finest I’ve ever worked with.
It was either this or buy a Cintiq, but this turned out to be much more affordable. (I know I know, quality not as good, but it’s fine for a hobbyist.)
Has both active-digitizing and multi-touch.
The only downside is the pen, which is garbage. Good news is you can buy Cintiq pens from Wacom that are incredibly responsive and comfortable in hand.
So don’t think Dell revolutionized anything with whatever new tablet they’re touting.
For those interested in this sort of thing, the TX-2000 series has also been OSX-86ed successfully. I can still hope one day Apple will make a legit tablet with a keyboard and active digitizing.
Hope this didn’t come off like an advert, I just really love my tablet.
Unfortunately the Dell doesn’t use a Wacom digitizer, so it likely can’t send stylus pressure information to apps like Photoshop or Painter.