You may have seen some speculation that we would launch a new Dell netbook in time for the back-to-school season. Starting today, customers in the Americas and Europe can order the sub-three pound Latitude 2100 netbook at a starting price of $369. These netbooks will be available in Asia and the Pacific in the next few days.
Latitude 2100 netbooks come in five fun primary colors: School Bus Gold, Chalkboard Black, Ball Field Green, Blue Ribbon and Schoolhouse Red. To see pictures of these colors and more, take a look at this Flickr set on our Dell page. We'll offer with several operating system options, including Ubuntu 8.10, Windows XP Home or Vista Home Basic.
The Latitude 2100 utilizes Intel's 945GSE chipset. Here's other important specs and options:
- Intel Atom N270 processor
- Up to 1GB fixed RAM; Additional memory slot to accommodate up to 2GB RAM total
- Display: 1024x576 LED screen, optional touch screen
- Storage options: standard hard drive options up to 250GB; SSD drive up to 16GB
- Battery: 3 and 6-cell battery options
- Wired Connectivity: 10/100/1000Mb Gigabit Ethernet
- Wireless Connectivity: 802.11g standard, option 802.11n
- Ports: 3 USB, VGA, headphone/speaker out, mic
- Expansion slot: SD/ MMC card reader
So what makes these netbooks suitable for education? Simply put, the Latitude 2100 was designed for students in the classroom. The Latitude 2100 netbooks feature a rubberized case for easier handling and increased durability, a clean vent-free bottom that helps avoid intrusion from spills, an optional carrying strap to make them easier to carry around. The netbooks have a network activity lights so that wireless connectivity can be monitored by educators and a webcam option. Another option is touch screen, that should be most useful for classes with younger children.
Beyond that, two notable benefits are the remote management capability and Dell's Mobile Computing Station. All Latitude 2100 netbooks can be managed over the network: Wake-on-LAN, Alert Standard Format and Systems Management Server can be supported. The Mobile Computing Solution which will be available to customers soon, makes it easy to store, charge and manage up to 24 netbooks at one time using one Ethernet and power cord. It allows administrators to push software updates to any of the systems connected to it. It's initially available to customers in the United States.
This video gives a pretty good overview of both the Latitude 2100 netbooks and Dell's Mobile Computing Station.
Over the next several days, we'll write several posts dedicated to the topic of our technology initiatives related to education. Enrique's post is here on Direct2Dell. To see other posts later this week, be sure to check out Dell's Education blog or the blog area of Edu4U.
Personally, I sure wish we had these netbooks when I was in school. In my time, we used TRS-80s in the first computer science class I took and we liked it. Technology improvement is a cool thing.
