New Dell Notebooks -- up to 19 Hours Battery Life

New Dell Notebooks -- up to 19 Hours Battery Life

Techtree News Staff, Aug 13, 2008 1140 hrs IST

New business notebooks from Dell will offer up to 19 hours of battery life

EDIT: James Kendrick, over at jkOnTheRun was present at the Dell conference when the announcement over these notebooks was made. He has some interesting thoughts on the Dell's 19-hour claim. He writes: "Based on my calculations the Dell e4200 with a total of 14 cells of battery would likely last about 13 hours, a decent battery life to be sure but a far cry from the 16 hours that Dell is claiming." Read the whole post here

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Dell has unleashed a plethora of business notebooks today. Highlights for the new range include a bevy of features such as backlit keyboards, external SATA drive connections, DisplayPort capability, and a USB PowerShare connection that allows one to charge mobile devices via USB ports; even when the system is powered down.

That apart, these new Latitudes offer ridiculous battery-life -- up to 19 hours*. Here's a run-down of the highlights of these new models:

Battery life: Some system configurations can get up to 19 hours. Dell claims to have acheived this using a mix of high-capacity batteries and system and software tweaks.

Connectivity: 802.11n, most are WiMax ready, Ultra-wideband and Bluetooth 2.1, optional GPS.

Security options: smart card and fingerprint readers, hardware-based disk encryption, contactless smart card technology. Also offering Dell's ControlVault solution that centralizes user identity key management and storage.

Colour options: Yay. Mica-Brushed Metal Black, Regatta Blue and Regal Red. Or Black, Blue and Red, for us colour-challenged mortals. Seriously, how do they come up with these names... Oh and the E4200 adds Quartz Pink as an option as well.

Exteriors: These laptops feature full-frame magnesium alloy construction and all-metal hinges.

A video overview of the new Latitudes:

Dell also shared another feature that we can expect a few months down the line. Termed Dell Latitude ON, Lionel Menchaca at Dell blogs about this feature: "It is an application that gives you access to your e-mail, contacts, calendar, attachments and the Internet without the need to boot into the system's main OS. The Dell Latitude ON mode will enable multi-day battery life since it utilizes a dedicated low-voltage sub-processor and operating system." The feature is expected to appear on the Latitude E4200 and E4300 "in the coming months".

More here.

*An aside: It's funny how 19 hours of battery life seems a lot to us. Not long ago, PDAs would run multiple days on a couple of AAs. Today, anything mobile that runs longer than 5 hours on a single charge is heralded as a saviour. Our devices can do so much more that the PDA of old, but battery technology has severely lagged behind. Hopefully, 19 hours on a single charge will become the norm soon.

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Discussion Board

(3) Comments

Bharat

,Chandigarh, on Aug 18, 2008 09:35 AM

The Battery life seems wonderful.. but i don't think it can pull it off for 19 hrs.. Maybe it can run for abt 16-17 hrs if Dell claims it for dat long as 19 hrs... The cost is affordable too.. Overall.. its a good laptop and dell notebooks are preferable too as they provide good hardware which lasts long....