Dell widens Latitude line

Dell Computer today announced a new generation of its Latitude notebook line, which will include enhanced multimedia features and is targeted at the corporate, educational, and government markets.

The Dell Latitude Xpi CD M166ST is based on Intel's 166-MHz Pentium processor with MMX technology. Available immediately, the system costs $4,199 with 16MB of memory, a 1.6GB hard drive, 10X CD-ROM, and 12.1-inch display. The notebook will support up to 80MB of memory, and 3.0GB hard drives.

The new systems are designed for corporate, government, and education customers. To allow easier management of laptops used in businesses, the XPi CD comes with Dell Inspector, a Desktop Management Interface application.

The Inspector reduces the PC's cost of ownership by allowing easier tracking of servicing information, as well as immediate access to the specifications of individual machines, such as processor speed, memory size, and hard drive capacity.

The new system can use batteries, memory, peripherals, and docking stations from the previous five generations of Dell Latititude XPi laptops, dating back more than two years.

For use in multimedia work, the XPi's graphics adapter supports 30-frame-per-second MPEG video, as well as displaying 16-bit color in SVGA mode.