Product Reviews

Tablet PCs never captured the attentions of PC owners in the way that Microsoft might have liked. But while most of the big manufacturers have dipped their toes into the murky waters, and with varying levels of success, one has been notable by its absence: Dell.

Its first attempt at a Tablet PC was made available to the public in December last year, and after calling our Dell contact enough times to etch her phone number indelibly in our minds, last week finally saw the arrival of our very own review unit.

In fact, we would have had this review up last week were it not for the fact that our first review unit had died due to, we presume, a butter fingered courier or two. But where most faulty laptops would have found themselves packed away in seconds, even a non-functioning Latitude XT was a pretty exciting prospect.

It's delightfully compact, measuring just 297 x 218 x 25mm. And while its 1.72kg weight is no match for the lightest of ultraportables, it's only a whisker away from the HP 2710p's 1.7kg.

It's a simply gorgeous looking bit of kit too. There's no hint of Latitude or Vostro-inspired styling; instead it's clear that the Latitude XT has benefited from a blank slate approach to its design. It's not flashy, but the slim grey and black aluminium chassis looks classy and feels genuinely luxurious to the touch. It's surprisingly sturdy too, even if the display's hinge exhibits a little more flex than we'd like. If this is a sign of things to come from Dell's business range, then we can't wait to see what Dell comes up with later this year.

But with the basic specification coming in at £1,129, it's clear that the Latitude XT should be nothing less than strikingly well-constructed. For that stratospheric price tag you get an Intel low voltage processor running at 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM and a teeny 40GB hard disk - a pretty unimpressive set of vital statistics. For the slightly more daunting price at the top of this review, the memory swells to 2GB, the hard disk expands to 120GB and an integrated 3G module is included into the bargain. If you have an even bigger budget to make a dent in, then SSD options can hike the price ever higher.

But, as you'd expect, the Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 processor limits overall performance to a typically underwhelming 0.57 in our benchmarks. The Radeon Xpress 1250's abilities are equally modest - gaming is out of the question - but it's the Latitude XT's battery life that proves the real disappointment.

The slim chassis is attractive, no argument there, but it just doesn't leave much room for a battery (or an optical drive for that matter, but we'll get to that later). Our review unit came with the six-cell 4,200mAh unit which lasted just over three hours while sitting idle, and 1hr 35mins under heavy usage. Compared to the six-and-a-half hours we eked out of HP's 2710p, it's a touch disappointing.

The Dell catches up with its ergonomics, however. The keyboard is a fantastic example and each key is blessed with a crisp, positive feel and a nice, light action. The trackpad works well too and, like many business laptops, finds itself complimented by a trackpoint, so you get the best of both worlds.

Flip the Latitude into Tablet mode and there are more neat touches. A rocker on the laptop's edge allows for quick scrolling and selecting, without recourse to the keyboard or stylus. This is supplemented by four shortcut buttons, which lock the computer, open your preferred email program, lock the computer and flip the screen orientation.

The screen flip button is a familiar sight, but the Latitude XT responds impossibly quickly to every press. It's enough to make most other Tablet PCs feel positively sluggish in comparison.

And, although it lacks

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an integrated optical drive (just like HP's 2710p), Dell tackles that problem with an optional slim, light media docking base with built in DVD writer and an array of extra ports, though this is rather expensive at an extra £169.

In some areas the Dell Latitude XT comprehensively trounces the 2710p, however. Where HP's business tablet employed an active digitiser panel, and hence only responded to the prod of a stylus, the Latitude XT is the only Tablet PC to employ a capacitive screen courtesy of N-trig.

The benefits of the capacitive screen are manifold. The first is that it responds more eagerly than previous Tablet PCs based on resistive panels, and the second is the improved image quality.

Where resistive technologies impede the brightness and clarity of the displayed image, the Latitude XT's panel is impressively free from grain or any other visual aberrations. It stretches an ample 1,280 x 800 pixel resolution across its matte 12.1in diagonal and provides a bright, clean image. It's noticeably better than the grainy, if bright, panel found on HP's 2710p.

And whether you're using your finger or the supplied stylus - which docks neatly in the laptop's left hand edge - the Latitude XT proves impressively usable. Some on-screen elements can be a little too small to poke with absolute reliability, but it soon becomes second nature to navigate Windows by touch when the stylus doesn't come readily to hand. And when you do decide to take advantage of Vista's superb handwriting recognition, inking feels natural and incredibly responsive.

It's possible to manually disable the touchscreen function or the stylus, for those occasions when you only need one or the other. There's also a fantastically handy Auto option which disables the touchscreen when you're inking with the stylus or vice versa - it can be a little slow on the uptake at times, but if you've ever struggled to stop your palms interfering with the cursor while using a stylus, you'll think this is a stroke of genius.

And with Dell promising firmware and software updates to enable the screen's multitouch capabilities in the future, the Latitude XT can boast that it's the only laptop in existence that's ready for Windows 7's much-touted touch-friendly interface.

There are downsides to the clever Tablet technology though. The lid feels impressively rigid, but flexing it to and fro sets the cursor darting about erratically, selecting, maximising and dragging windows about as it goes. It's not something you'll do on purpose, but it's still a bizarre quirk.

And if you decide to lower your screen resolution from its native 1,280 x 800 pixels to a business projector friendly 1,024 x 768, for example, you can forget about using the touchscreen or stylus to flick through your PowerPoint slides. The panel is calibrated to ignore the native resolution, and changing it means it's incapable of accurately mapping physical input to the displayed image.

Our current A-lister, HP's 2710p, wasn't without its limitations, but it was still a fine example of a typically flawed breed; light, compact and beautifully finished. But, in the Latitude XT, Dell have taken what made the HP 2710p great, and made it even greater. The battery life is a disappointment, but we'd happily suffer the bulk of a secondary battery in exchange for the XT's super ergonomics and far superior touchscreen. The three years of next business day international travellers warranty may be a bit of a mouthful, but it's a welcome cherry on top.

This Dell's excellence comes at a cost, of that there is no doubt, but the XT is more accomplished than any tablet PC that comes before it. If you can forgo the Tablet functions, then ultraportables such as Lenovo's Thinkpad X300 are more compelling but, as it stands, the Latitude XT is almost enough to make even the most ardent Tablet cynic think twice.

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