A very nice tablet PC comes from Michael Dell's company. After so many rumours and users' expectations, Dell Latitude XT tablet is on the table.
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So, let us begin with specifications, because there are some very nice touches under the hood. (And above, for that matter.) Latitude XT tablet may have one or two hearts from Intel, Core 2 Solo or Core 2 Duo, both ULV with 2 MB of cache memory and 533 MHz front-side bus. What they calculate will be presented on a 12.1-inch display with typical resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. You can put in it up to 3 MB of RAM memory, while hard drive can be from 40 to 120 GB, and solid-state drive of 32 or 64 MB. For graphic tasks there is integrated graphic chip ATI Radeon X1250 UMA.
Connectivity is good and you may connect to practically any type of network you have near you: Wireless 802.11g, 802.11a/g, 802.11a/g Draft n, Bluetooth, Mobile Broadband and Gigabit Ethernet. To control new beauty from Dell you need an operating system, and there you can go with Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 or Windows Vista Business or Ultimate (which we prefer).
So far, so good. But the best is yet to come. Dell Latitude XT have weight of 1.9 kg (under four-pound) which means it will be easy to carry it to and from business meeting. (When you will spend half the time working on it, and other half explaining to your business partner that she can't have it! No! Because it is mine!)
Under the hood there is so-called capacitive touch technology that will support, says Dell, multi-touch technology in the future. Tablet PCs usually use resistive touch technology, and new Dell's promises much better feeling and response. After little bit of working with Latitude XT you must agree that new technology is better. Capacitive touch technology means that no pressure on screen is required. The results: Longer living screen, more accuracy and possibility of multi-touch.
By our humble opinion, the new technology justifies the price of 2500 dollars. While someone may argue that there are cheaper and more powerful tablets on the market today, you must pay for the tech-improvement. And improvement is dramatic, and we believe that there is no point to compare Latitude XT and some tablet with resistive touch technology. When you try new Dell you'll never go back. Great device. ■
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