If you’ve pre-ordered the business-focused Dell Latitude 6430u, you could soon have it in your hands as Dell have announced that shipping has started. One thing you won’t be able to enjoy though is the WiGig feature because the dock is not ready yet. That’s quite the disappointment as the 6430u is the first ever laptop to offer tri-band wireless. There’s another gotcha too – the unit may not actually ship with WiGig at all. It looks like the Dell Latitude 6430u is only ‘upgradeable’ to WiGig.
At least Dell have now publicly confirmed the dock is on its way.
For the Latitude 6430u, be on the lookout for the Dell wireless dock, which will be the first wireless dock in the market featuring with 802.11ad Tri-band WiGig technology that will also enable a multi-gigabit speed of data, audio, and video wireless communication between 6430u and wireless dock. The Dell wireless dock provides high secure wireless connectivity and same level of usability as Latitude E-dock
The 6430u starts at $899 right now at Dell (includes over $300 discounts at Dell.com today) which is a nice starting price for this type of Ultrabook although we expect you’ll choose to upgrade from 64GB to 128GB which puts the price back up to around $980. Prices go way up close to the $2K mark.
But getting back to the WiGig option, we had heard that it would be enabled via tri-band wireless card from Qualcom-Atheros which includes a Wilocity WiGig module.Try finding evidence of that on the Dell ordering system and you’ll come up empty handed. Your wireless options are limited to non WiGig options and a note…
“Systems shipping with Intel 6300 WLAN will not be upgradeable to support Dell Wireless docking in the future. If you would like your system to be upgradeable to Dell Wireless docking in the future, please select any WLAN option other than Intel 6300.”
One must assume that it’s got something to do with antenna requirements which leads us to believe that the 6430u will ship with the required WiGig antenna, unless you request an Intel Centrino 6300 card. Regional options vary though and in Germany we can only find the Intel Centrino 6300 option on the Dell website.
If the WiGig module is an upgrade, who’s going to install it? Will WiGig be a return-to-service option? If so, we’re not expecting it to be cheap.
We’ve reached out to Dell for some clarification and will update when we hear something official. Until then, be careful when you order a ‘WiGig-capable’ Dell Latitude 6430u
