Dell to sell business laptop with battery life up to 19 hours
Jeff Clarke, Dell Senior Vice President and General Manager of Dell Business Product Group, shows 2 color options of the new Dell Latitude E4200 laptop during a Dell product launch event August 12, 2008 in San Francisco, California. Dell announced a new line of its popular Latitude laptops with new features including increased security, backlit keyboards and battery life up to 19 hours. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Wednesday August 13 2008
Dell Inc., the second-largest personal-computer maker, introduced business laptops that can run for as long as 19 hours on a single charge.
Dell's Latitude E6400, which comes with a 14.1-inch (35.8 centimeter) screen, has a life of 8 hours and can run longer with an extra battery that slides onto the bottom, said Margaret Franco, head of business notebooks. That version costs $1,139, while a model with a 15.4-inch screen sells for $1,169.
Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell returned last year to spark a recovery after the company lost the lead in the PC market to Hewlett-Packard Co. While targeting consumers by selling computers through retail stores, Dell is trying to appeal to businesses with new designs and color options.
''Dell sold reasonably priced workhorse models, but they were stodgy,'' said Leslie Fiering, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in San Jose, California. The new models represent a ''major industrial design change.''
About 82 percent of Dell's $16.1 billion in sales last quarter came from business customers, with consumers accounting for the rest. Corporate sales increased 6.9 percent, compared with a 21 percent gain in the consumer business.
Dell's other new business laptops include the ultra-portable Latitude E4200. It weighs 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram), making it the lightest laptop Dell has made. The computer has a 4-hour battery life and a 12.1-inch screen.
Color Options
The computers come in brushed metal, regatta blue and regal red. The E4200 also comes in quartz pink.
This year, the E4200 will use a feature called Dell Latitude ON, which lets workers manage e-mail and work on documents without starting the operating system. That may extend the battery life to more than a day.
''Younger workers expect their notebooks to act like cell phones and to be truly responsive devices,'' Franco said in a telephone interview.
Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, fell 21 cents to $24.98 at 11:51 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares had risen 2.8 percent this year before today. (Bloomberg)
- Melita Marie Garza and Fred Fishkin
