Dell have announced a Latitude 7000 series laptop that, in some configurations, will be an Ultrabook. It’s aimed at business and education, offers VPro and other business features, a large set of options and comes in 12-inch and 14-inch versions, unlike the similar Latitude 6430U, Ivy Bridge Ultrabook that only came in a 14-inch version.
Using the same design style as the Latitude 6430U that we reviewed in May, the 7000 series looks smart and professional and comes with many of the options offered on the 6430U (these will vary per region of course.) For example you’ll be able to choose a WiFi card that has WiGig support and in the image above we get our first glimpse of that WiGig docking station that we heard about back in 2012.
Screens will start with a matt 1366×768 and go up, eventually, to touchscreen-capable FullHD options.
MIL-STD 810G ruggedness is part of the deal.
As for battery, we see that the current models are shipping with a 34Wh battery and it’s not clear if a 60Wh option is possible.
Storage options span the full range up to self-encrypting SSD drives.
As for prices, you’ll be able to take this up into $2K territority we think but basic packages are being offered as low as $1049 for the 14-inch model.
Finally, for Linux fans, it looks like Dell are going to offer Ubuntu 12.04 but we can’t confirm that yet.
- Latitude e7440 – 14-inch
- Latitude e7240 – 12 inch
Update: Engadget have some hands-on.
We’re at IFA next week and IDF the week after so we’re expecting to be able to have hands-on with this new Ultrabook.
12″? I may get this to replace my X220. Tried the trackpoint clickpad buttons on one of the newer T series ThinkPads and it’s a step backwards in terms of using the trackpoint. Good thing the Latitudes keep the buttons.
I like that Linux may be officially supported. Dell may contribute to drivers upstream like with the XPS. I wonder how well 12.04 will support Haswell with its 3.8 kernel and older xorg stack. I read that 3.10 and above offer better performance and fixes several issues with Haswell.
According to this: http://partnerdirect.dell.com/sites/channel/Documents/Dell-Latitude-7000-Series-Ultrabooks-Spec-Sheet.pdf
Up to HD 5000
31/42 WHr battery (the extended battery isn’t very big)
Too bad there isn’t a higher resolution non-touch matte screen option.
Anyone know what chips Dell uses for their rebranded WiFi cards?
I’m still on the fence on getting a U-series based ultrabook over an M-series notebook though. I kind of want a 37 W TDP quad core for running VMs and video encoding (no Quick Sync on Linux).
I’m looking into moving away from ThinkPads as well. Too bad I’ve been hoping to get a quad core ultraportable (not an ultrabook) since TDPs have been going down. The Latitudes officially being Linux compatible and possibly cheaper than the Windows version may sway my decision though.
@FritoLay
If Dell comes out with a 12.5″ quad core “fat” notebook then I’d definitely opt for that over this one.
Official Linux (at least Ubuntu) support is great. Support won’t automatically reject my requests due to not running Windows.
Having tried the new single trackpoint buttons/clickpad and felt it awkward when using the trackpoint, I’ve been looking around for a different brand like the HP EliteBook and Dell Latitude. I hope the 12.5″ model gets a higher capacity extended battery. 42 WHr isn’t much bigger. Haswell may have lower idle power but it won’t matter much when doing the CPU intensive tasks I do. Of course, there’s an argument of why I’m even using a notebook but I can’t exactly take a 12 core Xeon workstation around and remote solutions don’t always work (bad/no internet access or software licenses don’t allow such uses for some reason).
It’d be nice for a higher resolution non-touch matte screen option as well.