When Engadget first broke the news that Dell’s upcoming Eee PC-killer would be called the Dell “E,” a lot of folks lamented that the name seemed a bit silly. Now that Dell’s web site has its first official mention of the computers, the name makes a little more sense. It looks like the E series will follow Dell’s usual naming convention and you’ll be able to pick up a tiny laptop with a name like the Dell latitude E630 in the not too distant future.
There’s not much more information available on the web site. The only way you can even find this little image (which doesn’t look much of anything like the laptop Michael Dell was carrying around earlier this year) is by searching for E-Family. And when you click the link, you get taken to the D-Family landing page. But at least Dell is acknowledging the fact that the letter E exists… and will be used to label some upcoming PCs.
[via Engadget]
Update: As readers here and over at Engadget have pointed out, it’s quite possible this Latitude E-Family has nothing whatsoever to do with the upcoming Dell netbook. But then again, maybe it does. Or maybe it doesn’t.
According to a Dell employee’s post on Idea Storm, E is not the name of these small laptops; it will actually be Dell Inspiron Mini.
This is clearly the Latitude Exxx series which is a replacement for the Latitude Dxxx, Dell’s corporate laptop range
Actually I think this is a different laptop series than the E (Mini Inspiron). If you view the link “Latitude E-series of laptops” it says these are 13.4 to 15.4-inch laptops and the picture looks way different than anything in the leaked stuff. (Notice the Mini Inspirons have a rounded edge on the lid while the E-Series are angled. Also all the MI’s also have grey keyboard bezel while the other has a black.)
With this announcement there’s no way the Mini Inspiron is being renamed to ‘E’.