Dell Latitude Z hands-on

Andrew Nusca | Oct 06, 2009

It’s the first Latitude with attitude.

Dell recently pulled back the curtain on the rumored Latitude Z thin-and-light laptop, a 16-inch slab of angular portability packed with an array of business-centric features.

First mentioned as a high-horsepower executive power system, the Latitude Z makes quite an impression in person. I had a chance to take a sneak peek and manhandle the laptop and it’s an impressive piece of kit.

Dell reps said that the Latitude Z is intended to be an executive laptop to be coveted and bragged about--"executive bling," they said--somewhere in the same space that the MacBook Air or Sony Vaio Z currently occupies.

Clearly, the Latitude Z is certainly unlike anything on the market right now.

Open the Latitude Z up and you’ll notice a redesigned Dell-style backlit keyboard (slightly scalloped, but with isolated keys) and a bigger, gesture-enabled touchpad. The interior of the clamshell is trimmed in a real aluminum border, and you’ll notice a fingerprint reader and a contactless RFID card scanner where your palms rest.

The other real news is Dell EdgeTouch, an almost-hidden capacitive strip along the right side of the display’s bezel that’s activated by a finger touch on a small outlined sensor at the bottom-right corner. When activated, a taskbar-like touch menu appears on the right edge of the display, allowing for shortcut access to useful items.

The final new business feature is Dell’s Always ON technology, an instant-on, no-boot miniature operating system that allows for Web browsing, e-mail, calendar and contact access. (Dell reps said they’re working on incorporating instant messages into the environment; for now, no dice.) Believe it or not, this environment uses an entirely different, secondary mini ARM processor that sits beneath your palms, saving battery life.

Via Zdnet.co.uk

Filed under: Notebooks
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