Like HP with their Elitebook Folio 9470M, Toshiba with their Z930, Lenovo with their X1 Carbon, Dell are launching a business-focused Ultrabook. The Dell Latitude 6430u was leaked back in May but formal launch was announced by Dell this week.
Clearly they were waiting for Windows 8 but note that this isn’t a touchscreen Ultrabook, despite the pretty touch-led Metro user interface being shown above.
…features including wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.0 and mobile broadband options. Other useful business features include a back-lit keyboard, VGA and HDMI ports and integrated microphone and HD Webcam for video conferencing and Intel Smart and Rapid Start technologies for fast access to data and to stay on top while on the road. The Latitude 6430u is the first Ultrabook in the Latitude line.
There’s MIL-STD-810G conformity (ruggedness) and, like the X1 Carbon and Elitebook Folio, a touch pointer. We assume that a VPro version will be available too but there’s no confirmation on that yet.
Availability is clearly not going to happen before mid October (Windows 8) and pricing is also unknown at the moment.
Watch out for a detailed article on Business Ultrabooks, Security and Management here on Ultrabooknews soon.
Source: Dell
I finally broke down and installed Win8 on my HP Elitebook and although the first 24 hours are frustrating as you just try to get productivity back and figure out how to do things the “Windows 8 way”, I find 3 or 4 new happy surprises every day and I’m starting to really like it.
I think my productivity will ultimately be better and this is on a non touch screen device. I’m using a lot more keyboard shortcuts than I did even on Win8 and I can only call the new mouse-based gestures “mouse shortcuts” vs. how I often did things in Win7. The multi-monitor experience definitely takes some getting used to but being now on my 3rd day of use I think I know what to expect.
-If I can have the same data and apps across my work machine, my personal convertible tablet, and phone it will be an amazing day.
I have a lot of hope that I can get all product, app, and data fragmentation out of my life come Christmas time. I picked a great time to move back to the US and “gear up” on my gadget purchases! ; )
Adam
Fingers crossed that the Surface Pro is a few months behind the Surface RT because it’s going to be a super early Haswell device! (It would make my gadget dreams come true, but I think there’s a less than 30% chance of that happening.)
Adam