Dell's new latitude business laptops offer 32.7 hours battery life

 

Business,Business News,Business Opportunities Dell on Thursday announced Latitude business laptops with Intel's latest Core processors that can provide around 33 hours of battery life, but only whencombined with attached battery packs. The new Latitude E-series laptops will come with screens ranging insize from 12.5 to 15.6 inches. The company achieved 32.7 hours ofbattery life on a Latitude E6430, which is a business laptop with a14-inch screen and Intel's latest Core processor, code-named IvyBridge. [ Also on InfoWorld: This slideshow gives you a look inside Intel's new Ivy Bridge chips. Say ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: First Look newsletter . ] The long battery life was reached with a nine-cell battery, andbatteries that plug into the bay and under the laptop. The batterylife was measured based on average usage of the laptop, companyofficials said during an interview. Dell is trying to load up as much battery as it can on laptops,officials said. For example, users can remove an optical drive froma bay and replace it with a battery. 

Some of the power-saving benefits also may have come from usingsolid-state drives, which are considered more power-efficient thanhard drives that spin. Intel's Ivy Bridge processors also are morepower-efficient and help save power through features like theability to shut down idle cores. Intel provided more details on the Ivy Bridge processors onThursday, saying the chips are more power-efficient and faster onapplications and graphics than predecessors. The chips will beofficially unveiled next week at the Computex trade show in Taipei. Dell is getting consistent, if not slightly higher, results onbattery life as tests continue on other Latitude E-series laptops,said a Dell spokeswoman. Beyond the E6430, the company announcedE6230 (12.5-inch screen), E6330 (13.3-inch), and E6530 (15.6-inch)laptops. Pricing on the laptops were not immediately available. The new laptops also include the thin-and-light E6430S, which is a14-inch laptop built into a frame typically used for laptops with13.3-inch screens. 

The E6430S provides a glimpse of the company'sfuture thin-and-light laptops, which will be highly portable butalso have strong security and remote management features. Dell is also tuning its business laptops for enterprises by addingvirtualization and device management capabilities, said David Lord,director of product planning and marketing. The key is to be ableto provide the mobile tools capable for a worker to access data atany time, while reducing the cost of servicing the laptop. Some ofthe new laptops come with Intel's VPro feature, which allows systemadministrators to remotely manage the laptop. Dell also announced the ruggedized Latitude E6430 ATG laptop, whichcan withstand extreme temperatures and environments.