It’s been one of those busy product days today. Earlier we unveiled the Alienware M11x portable gaming laptop. Now, I’m going to shift gears a bit to talk about two new products for business customers: the ultraportable Latitude 13 and the updated Dell Precision M6500 Mobile Workstation.
The Latitude 13 builds on the success we’ve seen with the Vostro
V13 and small business customers who value the thin and light
design, solid performance and strong battery life. ZDNet even referred
to the Latitude 13 as the "Enterprise
version of the Vostro V13," which is not far off the mark. The Latitude 13 adds features such as remote manageability and desktop virtualization through
certification from Citrix and VMware to deliver a full PC experience to users in non-standard
computing environments such as call centers, regional offices and
hotels;
Comprehensive systems management with support
for BroadcomTruManage technology and Dell
ImageDirect service which lets IT create, update and deploy system
images
24/7 from a secure online location;
Flexible connectivity options from mobile broadband and Wi-Fi via 802.11 g/n; and customized security offerings including solid-state
drives (SSD), full disk encryption (FDE), Trusted Platform Module (TPM) control
and Computrace software. The Latitude 13 will be available for order in the next several weeks.
Next up is the updated M6500 mobile workstation. When we introduced it originally introduced it in December last year, the M6500 was already the most powerful
and expandable mobile workstation we’ve ever offered. We’ll continue to offer quad core i7 processors, but now we’re expanding processor options to include Intel’s i5 processors. We also continue to offer workstation-class 1GB graphics options from both AMD and NVIDIA (watch Inside Enterprise IT for guest posts from each of those companies very soon by the way).
Update: Here are the guest posts from NVIDIA’s Shawn Worsell and AMD’s Janet Matsuda. It also has 4 DIMM slots for up to 16GB RAM, can support 3 internal hard drives to make RAID 5 a possibility. It also supports an optional RGB LED edge-to-edge 17-inch screen with 100 percent user-selectable
color
gamut support. And for those that need external bandwidth, you can outfit the M6500 with USB 3.0.
The dual-core versions of the
Dell Precision M6500 will be available for order in the coming weeks. More
details are available at www.dell.com/precision. If you missed this video featuring Autodesk’s Steven Roselle about what an M6500 workstation means to graphics professionals.
Customers our employees talk to stress the importance to meet the needs of an
increasingly demanding mobile workforce while providing the security and
systems management tools required to make it all work. This is a common
struggle for all organizations, big and small.
Of particular
interest to our customers is how they can better:
-
Provide
the right tools for the job – How does an IT organization support
specialty use cases (24/7 connectivity, tailored computing solutions
like convertible tablets and mobile workstations) while maintaining a
common level of support? -
Keep a diverse workforce
productive and happy –Is there room for individual expression with
designs that are as cool looking as they are efficient and easy to
manage? -
Manage technology transition without workforce
interruption – How does IT support OS migrations and new
technologies like desktop virtualization?
The Latitude 13
and Dell Precision M6500 help address these issues not only through the
design elements end-users can see but also IT-empowering features such
as remote manageability, common imaging, and embedded agents that make
implementing desktop virtualization easier. Click on either of the embedded pictures to see larger versions, or you can click on this set to see both the Latitude 13 and the updated Dell Precision M6500 mobile workstation.