Dell Latitude Z sports wireless charger

• 
• 
• 
• 

 1 of 4

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 29 Sep 2009 at 09:28

Dell is launching the first laptop to come complete with its own wireless charging pad.

Dell is hardly renowned as an innovator in the laptop business, however, the new Latitude Z arrives with an optional inductive charging pad, which sits under the laptop and charges it without the need for physical connections.

The pad will fully recharge the laptop in roughly the same time as a standard mains charger, according to reports, and with an eight-cell battery supplied as standard, Dell claims battery life will be around eight hours.

The pad will fully recharge the laptop in roughly the same time as a standard mains charger

The wireless charger isn't the only innovative touch on the Latitude Z. In another breakthrough development, the Z also sports an ultra wideband (UWB) radio. To complement this, Dell will be releasing a completely wireless docking station at the end of October, which will allow the connection of not only four USB devices, but also a monitor via a DVI output at the rear.

The laptop has touch controls built into the bezel of the screen, which can be customised to control functions such as screen brightness or volume, or assigned as shortcut buttons for specific applications.

It also includes an instant-on function, which uses a separate mini-motherboard fitted with an ARM processor to provide swift access to email, calendars and the Firefox web browser. And with a multitouch trackpad, the Z will support Windows 7's touch features out of the box.

Security wise, the laptop includes face detection software that automatically locks the laptop when the user moves away from the screen.

Slim dimensions

Dell claims the Latitude Z is the world's thinnest and lightest 16in laptop, measuring 14.55mm at its thinnest point and tipping the scales at a smidgen over 2.26kg with the standard eight-cell battery installed. "We're seeing thin and light spread throughout our portfolio," claims Todd Forsythe, vice president in Dell's commercial client product group.

The downside of the ultrathin design, however, is that there's no room for an optical drive. Instead, the Latitude Z is supplied with an external optical drive.

Elsewhere, the new Dell will feature a ultra-low voltage 1.4GHz Intel SU9400 processor, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 64GB SSD hard disk as standard.

The Latitude Z will start from £1,139 exc VAT and is available from today.