There doesn’t appear to be any official word yet, but Tweakers.net (translated) appears to have gotten their hands on info and photos of a forthcoming business-Ultrabook from Dell, the Latitude 6430u, which will have a 14″ screen, removable battery, changeable RAM, and more. This isn’t a huge surprise given the success that Dell has reported with the XPS 13 Ultrabook.
Dell have just kicked off a project with Ubuntu Canonical. Project Sputnik is a 6-month effort to try to pull together a solid Ubuntu build on a solid laptop, for developers. The Dell XPS13 has been chosen as the first target platform.
We’re constantly getting questions from developers about which Ultrabook to buy but the problems is the word ‘developers.’ I’m a developer myself but the only tool I use is VI as I hack my PHP and HTML for the Ultrabooknews product database. Other, more serious, developers need source code control, collaboration tools, compilers and integrated development environments. Project Sputnik is aiming to deliver a standard Ubuntu build (currently based on 12.04) and additional, downloadable profiles. So if you’re developing for the web, you might add in a web-focused profile. If you’re developing for Android, there could be a better profile for you.
Dell seems to have found out that when you make a slim, powerful, and well-built computer, it sells! As is the case with the company’s XPS 13 Ultrabook which is currently has a month long shipping delay due to overwhelming demand, according to Dell.com. This demand will almost definitely lead to more Ultrabooks in the future from Dell, and possibly to a gaming Ultrabook from Dell’s Alienware gaming brand.
Brad Linder of Liliputing has an article up today about the lack of Dell Netbooks on the US site. After a follow-up by Joanna Stern of The Verge, Dell has now confirmed it is dropping netbooks and, apparently, any development of notebooks on the Cedar Trail platform. The focus in 2011, according to the Dell spokesperson, is ‘Thin and Light.’
I have two thoughts. Number 1 is that the Cedar Trail platform doesn’t exactly equate to netbooks and I think there’s space for 11.6” ultralights on that platform. They would offer reasonable CPU power and with an SSD and a redesign have every chance of riding on the coat-tails of Ultrabooks to offer a very cheap and stylish thin and light solution.
The second thought, of course, is when are the Dell Ultrabooks coming?
As we entered IDF in San Francisco this morning the first booth that greeted US was the Ultrabook both. Front and Center.
I little look round the booth reveals that there will be 6 new models shown. While 5 ate likely to be ODM devices looking.for a brand, one of them isn’t. LG/Compal Ultrabook Anyone?
The Dell Adamo is also shown on a poster.
Stay tuned because that booth opens in just 2 hours.
Details haven’t emerged yet, such as which specific version of Honeycomb will be used and whether or not it will be customized or left stock. Jenn says the the update is expected to greatly increase the battery life of the device.
This is great news for Streak 7 owners, but it only applies to the WiFi-only version of the device. Apparently T-Mobile’s 3G/4G variant, which StreakSmart points out was recently discontinued, may never receive the update.
An alternative option to acquire Honeycomb is a custom ROM which is an unofficial software release that can be installed to your device if you’ve got the skills necessary. Jenn has a link to that ROM on her original post, go check it out.
Are you a WiFi-only Streak 7 user who’s excited for the Honeycomb Upgrade? Or perhaps a T-Mobiler who’s angry that your device wont be updated? Let us know in our Streak 7 forum.
A leaked Dell Tablet roadmap has revealed three new touchscreen devices may be released this year starting with an Android 10 inch tablet in June.
The leak mentions the Android based 10 inch Dell Streak Pro, a third generation convertible XT tablet (Windows based, and not so portable given that it will probably weigh is excess of 2 KG’s), and the Latitude ST which will run an Intel Oak Trail processor and Windows 7.
According to the leak the new Streak Pro will run a Tegra T25 dual-core A9 (1.2GHz) chip which is a newer version than the Tegra we know from Tablets like the Xoom. I currently use a Viewsonic G-Tab and Motorola Atrix 4G (both with the current Tegra 2) and I’ve been very happy with the performance of both, although the roadmap indicates an overly on top of Android called Dell Stage 1.5 which hopefully won’t detract from the performance of the device. There’s also mention of USB host support (allowing it to access external drives via USB) which is a great feature as having support for this makes life with an Android device much easier.
In my opinion the original Streak [product page] occupied a difficult place in between devices as it was too big to be a phone but too small to be a tablet. At 10 inches the Streak Pro is obviously positioned to compete with the iPad 2 [product page] and that’s a very hard market to compete in. If Dell can get the hardware, software, and features right it will make life a whole lot easier when it goes up against the current king of the 10 inch tablets.
Jump to almost 9 months later and we find a Streak device passing through WiFi certification (this actually happened back in November, but didn’t get uncovered until recently.) The device could be one of several different sizes of Streak devices, but a commercial concept leak from Engadget lets us assume that the device is in fact the forthcoming Dell Streak 7. Let’s also not overlook the fact that Streak Smart called out case designer, Vaja, for listing a 7 inch Streak on their website.
From the Engadget leak and the WiFi certification, we know that the Dell Streak 7 will be a 7 inch Android device that functions as a phone as well. It’ll also have WiFi b/g/n and a Gorilla Glass screen. The commercial concept also mentions a “blazing graphics card for on the go gaming inch which could indicate some Nvidia Tegra integration, but could also just be marketing speak for “Look, it plays games! inch.
the original 5 inch Streak was already considered huge for a phone (and hasn’t quite taken off)… We’ll have to wait and see how people react to Dell expecting them to use a 7 inch device as a phone. Chances are, we’ll get a look at this device at CES 2011.