Dell Adds New Touch To Tablet PCs

AUCKLAND, Dec. 12, 2007 – Dell is setting new benchmarks for tablet PCs with the addition of the Latitude™ XT. Designed with business users in mind the Latitude XT is the thinnest and, at 1.6 kilograms, one of the lightest 12.1-inch convertible tablets available in New Zealand – and will be the first to be sold here with new capacitive touch technology (also supports future multi-touch capability, see vlog).

The Latitude XT has been developed in response to feedback from customers who want a tablet device but with the connectivity, durability, security and manageability features native to its corporate PC platforms.

In New Zealand the Dell Latitude XT starts at $4,100 and the company will begin to take orders next week (Dec. 19th).

More information on our blog.

Background

What’s capacitive touch? Tablets have traditionally used resistive touch technology which requires pressure to sense input and cannot support multi-touch. Capacitive touch uses the natural electricity produced by the human body to sense input. Capacitive touch is a more efficient and usable interface, especially in combination with pen technology. The capacitive touch on the Latitude XT offers:

• Sense on contact – no pressure required
• Consistent smooth scrolling, dragging, flicks, gestures
• Better durability and reliability- resistive screens wear more often
• No interference with handwriting recognition – resistive makes this worse
• High resolution/accuracy (same as pen)/High report rate – much better performance
• 90 percent transparency (high 70s with resistive) – means more brightness
• Efficient palm rejection

Microsoft Vista enables a collection of touch-based flicks and gestures that can enable greater efficiency in everyday computing (the tablet also comes with XP should the customer prefer but Vista’s native integration of touch technology is considered better).

What is multi-touch? Multi-touch allows users to use multiple simultaneous touch points to allow gestures and interaction with multiple fingers or hands and can provide rich interaction (including direct manipulation) through intuitive gestures (yes, ah la the iPod phone). More information can be found here.

ENDS