Dell Unveils Rugged Laptop

Dell has introduced the Latitude E6400 XFR rugged laptop engineered to meet the needs of customers in the harshest of environments.

The system meets a higher drop specification and offers a greater level of dust and moisture protection and is available in the U.S., Canada, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. It starts at $4,299.
Designed for the military, first responders, oil and gas environments, manufacturing floors, field technicians and homeland security, the Latitude E6400 XFR features the Dell-exclusive Ballistic Armor Protection System featuring PR-481, which leverages a high-strength substance used for applications such as cryogenics, aircraft components, military equipment and medical devices.
Features of Ballistic Armor include:

• Twice the impact strength of magnesium alloy
• 25 percent higher drop specification than any computer in its class – up to four feet with system powered down and closed and up to 36-inch drop test with the unit operating and LCD open
• High compression strength for outstanding impact protection
• Structural stability at extreme temperatures
• Scratch resistance providing corrosion protection

The Latitude E6400 XFR also features PrimoSeal Technology to enhance protection from dust and liquid with compression gaskets that deliver a higher level of ingress protection, or shielding from dust and moisture, than any system in its class with an IP-65 rating. The fully rugged laptop is engineered and independently tested to more than 13 military standards (MIL STD 810F) for operation in challenging environments. It shares common images and components with the Dell Latitude E6400 laptops for easy integration into existing environments and enables low ownership costs.
The Latitude E6400 XFR also includes:

• Intel Core 2 Duo processors and vPro technology for enhanced manageability and advanced security features
• QuadCool Thermal Management System allows the XFR to meet the MIL-STD 810F for temperature extremes and enables excellent performance – a fully configured Latitude E6400 XFR performs up to 90 percent faster than the Panasonic CF30
• Up to 167 percent faster than the Panasonic CF30 in graphics-intensive applications
• Extended field use batteries equipped with ExpressCharge enables battery re-charge up to two times faster than Panasonic CF-30
• At 2.2 inches thick and starting at 8.5 pounds, the Latitude E6400 XFR is 15 percent thinner and up to 5 percent lighter than the previous generation XFR
• Field-ready options include an in-vehicle docking solution, 12-cell rugged battery slice, E-family docking and legacy I/O adapter
• Large 14.1-inch wide display including DirectVue Technology – customers can work in direct sunlight on a screen that features impact resistance
• Optional Dell ProSupport service offerings.

Asus Launches G50V Gaming Laptop in India

Asus has announced the launch of the Asus G50V gaming laptop in India.

The G50V looks at delivering extreme gaming performance with intense visual computing power and is equipped the G50V with an Nvidia GeForce 9700M GT graphics processor backed by 512MB of dedicated GDDR3 memory. The 9700M has 32 DirectX 10-class "compute cores" and a 128-bit memory interface, and it is largely derived from the G96 GPU that powers desktop graphics cards like the GeForce 9500 GT. The G50V a 15.6" LCD and comes equipped HDMI, LifeFrame, SmartLogon and Virtual Camera and comes with double SATA hard disc drive (up to 640GB).

Stanley Wu, Country Head for Notebook Business, Asus India said, "We believe in providing the best technology in all our product categories to our customers. The G50V is one of the most revolutionary products in the high end gaming category. With a gaming focused design and strong graphics, the Asus G50V will redefine performance and enhance the entire gaming experience for the user."
The laptop comes bundles with a Republic of Gamers backpack, a 1600dpi mouse and a Siberia Steelseries Gaming Headset.

The Asus G50V is priced at Rs. 1,15,000.

Sony Vaio P VGN-P15G

The Vaio P is not a netbook—or so Sony insists you believe. The company has gone to great pains to stress exactly how and why this new ultraportable is a premium “pocket style PC”, and not just one of the dozen or more models of low-powered low-cost netbooks that every other major computer manufacturer has introduced in the past year, most of which look practically the same.

The Vaio P certainly doesn’t look anything like the raft of dinky plastic pastel-colored devices we’ve seen so far. The emphasis here is clearly on aesthetics and portability, with a super-slim rectangular design and high-quality glossy paint finish, this is one very flauntable computer.

Look and Feel
The unique shape and construction allow you to slip a Vaio P into pretty much any coat or trouser pocket. It’s easy to imagine carrying a Vaio P around anywhere, since it will also fit quite unobtrusively in a handbag or briefcase. It’s less than 2 cm thin, and only slightly wider and deeper than a standard business envelope.

Externally, apart from the glossy paint, you’ll notice the perfectly rounded corners and smooth lines. Even the underside is free of stickers and labels, and not a single screw is visible. Thankfully, the battery is removable. Around the edges you’ll find the power and Wi-Fi switches, two USB ports, an earphones socket, a custom port for expansion, and one slot each for SDHC and Memory Stick

cards—pretty limiting, but manageable.

Opening the lid reveals the biggest advantage of the rectangular design—a large, roomy keyboard. The keys are well placed and spaced, except for the miniscule right [Shift] key that’s quite easy to miss and the cramped arrow key cluster. Unfortunately, they’re a bit too mushy and shallow to type on, and since there’s no room for a wrist rest, the lower lip where the cursor buttons sit slightly obstructs the entire lower row.

The trackpoint device instead of a regular touchpad will take some getting used to, but it’s well positioned and you can tap it lightly to register a click. Above the keyboard lie two slots for the speakers, which quite frankly, are tinny and awful. A mic is embedded in the lower left corner, to go with the integrated VGA webcam.

And at last, we come to the screen. Eight inches is pretty normal for a netbook-class device, but this one throws all the usual rules of size and proportion right out the window, with a crazy resolution of 1600 x 768—over twice as wide as it is tall. That kind of horizontal resolution is greater than most 19-inch desktop monitors! Sure, you can claim the device plays HD video at native resolution, but the tiny screen size means all those pixels are crammed into almost no space at all. Icons and buttons are miniscule, and even regular text on screen is impossibly tiny.

Even worse, a huge portion of the screen is wasted on empty horizontal toolbars and menu bars when windows are maximized. Don’t even try using any Microsoft Office 2007 programs here—we found ourselves crouching over the Vaio P while using it just to read a simple Web page, leaning forward and straining our eyes uncomfortably to make out what was what. This effectively rules out using it for serious work for any extended period of time.

Sony launches ‘purse-sized’ laptop

Tech-savvy girls won’t have to carry the load of laptop bags anymore, for Sony has launched an ultra-portable "netbook" computer that will fit in any aspiring career woman’s purse.

The Vaio P boasts most features found on a laptop, from a webcam and GPS to a built-in 3G modem, allowing users to go online by inserting a mobile phone sim card.

The new netbook is aimed at people who want to surf the Internet, edit documents and check their emails on the go.

In fact, its designers have claimed that it is the lightest eight-inch netbook in the world.

They said it does everything that equivalent models of bigger sizes would do.

And the reviewers said that its keyboard, unlike many other small laptops, is easy to use.

While a basic model is available at 849 pounds, a faster-operating netbook with more memory will cost 1,370 pounds.

However, Joshua Topolsky from the technology website Engadget is not quite sure if many consumers will pay the asking price.

"It simply costs more than other options. A cost which Sony want users to ”aspire” to pay. There are plenty of viable, less expensive options,” The Telegraph quoted him as saying.

MSI X320 Macbook Air Look-Alike

Talk about identical twins. The MSI X320, which launched at CES 2009, will be a perpetual reminder of the Apple Macbook Air. I don’t want to call it a cheap knock-off, even though it is, as prices range from $800-$1,000; there’s more to this exceptionally thin netbook than just a cheap price tag.

In fact, it’s pleasantly surprising to see just how far MSI has come with the laptops that it plans to ship in the United States later this January.

The X320, like the Air, has an all-aluminum enclosure. Granted, it’s not as sturdy nor as rigid, and the heft isn’t quite there (with the Air, there’s a heft that’s equivalent to a Rolex watch). The rest of the design is almost identical: Its slim profile measures less than an inch thick, and it weighs 2.9 pounds; the Air is a smidge over 3 pounds. The X320 is a 13-inch laptop, meaning it houses a 13-inch widescreen. It uses the 16-by-9 form factor, as is common in HDTVs, and its monitor is rated at 1,366×768 resolution; the Air, meanwhile, is designed in a 16-by-10 form factor with a 1,280×800 resolution. The LED screen is bright and pleasant to look at, not much different than the Air’s.

The keyboard appears to be full sized, with standard proportions, instead of the non-adjoining keys that the Air uses; I had very little trouble typing with it. Navigating is another story, though. For one, the touchpad is significantly smaller than the Air’s, and it doesn’t possess the gesture capabilities: pinching and enlarging with two fingers and the two and three finger swiping, for instance, don’t work.

That’s not to say that the X320 won’t have touch capabilities, though. The company expects to add gestures to the widescreen itself, with the help of future models and Windows 7. The mouse buttons are loose and not very responsive, but I’ll chalk that up to pre-production issues until I get an official review unit.

However, the X320′s other features can actually put the Air to shame. For one, like many netbooks, it has more than one USB port – a total of three, to be exact. VGA and Ethernet ports are built in, and so are the SD slot and webcam. The hard drive is a 160-GB, 5,400 RPM model, expandable to 250 GB. There’s no internal 3G wireless for the time being, but Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are present. (full Story)