Dell Latitude ST business tablets breaks cover

Dell Latitude ST

Dell has posted a video on its Malaysian website showing a new Windows tablet called the Dell Latitude ST. We’d first heard about the tablet this summer, thanks to a leaked product roadmap, but we’ve known for a while that Dell was working on a new Windows tablet. Now it seems clear that the company is targeting enterprise customers.

According to the promotional video, the tablet will feature an Intel Atom processor, Windows 7 operating system, USB, SD card, and HDMI ports, a multitouch display, support for a stylus, and front and rear cameras.

There’s also an optional docking station that lets you set up the tablet for use as a desktop-style computer.

Dell is also playing up security features including remote wipe capabilities and support for device encryption. But the tablet’s key feature is that it runs Windows 7, which will make it easy for IT professionals to incorporate into existing networks. The video shows examples including a corporate environment, a classroom, and a hospital.

According to the leaked product roadmap, the Latitude ST will have a 1.5 GHz Intel Atom Z670 processor and a 1366 x 768 pixel display — but neither of those details has been confirmed yet.

We also don’t know anything about the price or release date — or whether the tablet will be available for consumers or if Dell will only be selling it to corporate customers. Dell does have a pretty good record of making its business products available to anyone through the company’s Dell Small Business website though.

via Notebook Italia

Posted on Sunday, October 23rd, 2011, 8:55 am by Brad Linder | 5 Comments

bronsky

Yawn! Another oaktrail tablet with ntrig digitizer.
JerryM

Dell’s TabletPC track-record = another vendor hawking wares that very few of us understand the utility of for ridiculous price-points; I understand their value, and in the past sometimes I have been willing to pay the cost to access that capability, but most of the mainstream, enterprise included, do not get it as to why a Tablet is valuable, or why an active digitizer may make it more of an asset for some users. And now with an Atom processor? If I need my business tablet to handle Windows 7 and keep up with my handwriting, why would I want it saddled with the same processor as the netbooks that cannot keep up with what I need them to do for business? I am not going to do work on anything less than a Core i5, much less on a device that I need to handle digital ink. I expect Dell to do the same idiotic thing TabletKiosk has done: release a TabletPC running on an Atom CPU for ~ $1400 (http://www.tabletkiosk.com/tkstore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=17&idproduct=271 ), assurning that it will never go anywhere other than to corporations with IT departments that do not have a clue.
- Vr/Zeux..>>
Anonymous

Wow, that tablet they’re selling is about 2 years old and running the old N270 ATOM, which was the first one Intel released. Probably the pricing is from back then too as netbook hardware has gotten cheaper and even enterprise market devices have dropped noticeably below the $1000 mark.

Also remember Dell is hardly the only company coming out with a Oak Trail tablet and most of them have more reasonable pricing.

Even mainstream devices have dropped in pricing from just a few years ago and now for $1400 you could get a fully spec’ed Samsung Series 7 PC tablet with Sandy Bridge i5, 3G, Wacon digitizer, etc. Though for some reason they didn’t design a built in holder for the pen like the Asus Eee Pad Slate.

Anyway, so long as solutions like Wacon digitizers or at least Ntrig screens are used then it can be relatively easy to design good palm rejection into the system and most companies are getting pretty good at it now.

HTC Flyer and Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet for example are pretty good with their pens, despite using ARM processors that for this generation at least is still below even ATOM CPU performance. ARM processors won’t really rival Intel ATOM until their next gen offerings start coming out next year. So it’s pretty impressive they can get reasonably good hand writing recognition.

Though of course getting everything to run smoothly with Windows versus a low resource requiring OS like Android will hardly be the same. But it is possible to get usable performance out of a netbook tablet as long as the company behind the product properly optimized everything.

While Dell may not have the greatest track record for successful new products, this won’t be their first tablet and hopefully they’ve learned from their past mistakes at least a little bit.

Not all companies are clueless about the hardware as well. Since there are companies that even develop their own in house software for their employees. Along with services provided by Citrix and similar for VM and remote access to more powerful systems when needed should still make these low power tablets pretty useful when properly set up.

Of course even the more powerful systems will suck if not properly set up. So a lot of “if”s but that’s true for most products these days.
Anonymous

I don’t get why every time they make a computer with the wacom/ntrig digitizers it has to be under-powered running an antiquated processor and overpriced. I still have an ancient Toshiba Portege 3500 running remote desktop for sketching and I have unfortunately not had a reason to upgrade.
http://www.metaksan.com Metaksan

I think it is a bit late for Dell to enter the market. And also, it is a bit early because may be it should be better to use Win 8 in such a tablet.

I think I will wait for a tablet using Windos 8 or will continue with an IOS or Android product

Dell Latitude ST business tablets breaks cover

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