Dell's Latitude ON and One-Touch Privacy coming to Latitude notebooks

Posted by Al Warmington on Wed 24 Sep 2008

Woohoo, now no one else can share your mid-flight hentai porn party!

Dell's Latitude E4200 has just launched in the last couple of days and the E6400 has been out a little longer, but it turns out there are very interesting things in the pipeline for these business notebooks.

First is the Latitude ON system, which will be gracing the E4200 later in the year. It's a cut-down alternative operating system that complements something more sophisticated (well, Vista). It's powers up immediately upon opening the notebook up and uses an always-on 3G or HSDPA connection to ensure that you get immediate access to web related tools.

These consist of email and a browser, as well as few other limited functions. Dell was very cagey about what kind of software the system was using to do this and said that nothing would be revealed until later in the year. We're guessing something Linux based.

The concept, though by no means unique, is intriguing enough and if it works how Dell describes, should be a treat for quickly checking, responding to or composing emails on the go.

Meanwhile, the E6400 is going to get a new one-touch privacy system. As the name implies, a button press will let you instantly restrict the viewing angle of the screen so people behind and beside you can't see what you're looking at.

Using special software and Dell's LED backlit screen hardware, people viewing from outside the restricted viewing angle will only see a white light and a Dell logo pattern on the privatised screen. At the same time, ordinary viewing is completely unaffected, or so Dell claims - we weren't able to see it first hand due to the demo version being stuck in customs.

Dell's spokespeople rather charmingly suggested that "consultants" would be the ones most likely to benefit from the screen tech, but we fear that the temptation to enjoy a bit of Debbie Does Dallas on long, dull transatlantic flights might prove too tempting for some. Hey, maybe that explains why the demo version was *ahem* stuck in customs.

The security screen tech will be rolling out first in the E6400s, but later in wider a range of Dell's business notebooks.