Inspecting gadgets

ACN rounds up the latest and greatest executive gadgets, from unbreakable technology to the newest tablet PC.

Dell Latitude XT

Dell has finally stepped up to the plate and released its first tablet PC after much teasing and rumours.

The Latitude XT, like most tablet PCs released these days, has a swivel screen that can be rotated and folded down facing outward to be used as a touch screen.

And, as everything seems to now, the XT includes some iPhone-type features in its touch screen technology. The screen responds to both finger and supplied pop-out stylus, and features a zoom function that uses Apple's style of a pinch-and-pull method to zoom in and out.

Apart from the gimmicks, the XT sports a 12.1 inch screen and weighs 3.5 pounds. This slim and light build is achieved by sacrificing the optical drive - not always a good option - however it does have the advantage of coming in a variety of flavours. Choices come in single or dual core Intel, 32Gbyte or 64Gbyte solid state hard drive or 40Gbyte, 80Gbyte and 120Gbyte regular hard drive, and perhaps best of all, an option to add a cold cathode fluorescent light (CCFL) to back light the LCD screen, which increases the weight slightly, but means that the screen can be viewed outdoors in sunlight.

Connectivity is provided by draft 802.11n wireless networking and Dell claims that with a solid-state drive with external battery slice, the XT can run to 9.5 hours battery life. It does come with Vista pre-installed though - shame.