Dell will ship laptop with GPS

As laptop prices continue their steady decline, Dell has come up with a new feature to tempt business buyers into paying top whack – integrated GPS (global positioning system).

According to Dell scoop site Engadget , Dell has pencilled in June as the launch data for its long-rumoured E-series laptops, which will feature the technology among a host of high-end accoutrements.

The top-of-the-range E6500 model will also include UWB (ultra-wideband) wireless thanks to the inclusion of Intel’s ‘Montevina’ chip, LED backlighting on a 15.4 inch screen, a DisplayPort (a rival to HDMI) for high-definition interconnect, an “all-day” battery system, and hard disk options including conventional hard drives, SSD flash drives, or – and this is imaginative – hybrid SSD drives.

Dell has added another interesting feature on the storage theme, namely a port for an external eSATA drive. These have been slow to take off but promise much fast backup throughput in comparison with the ubiquitous USB 2.0 and FireWire drives that are the road warrior’s current staple.

Encouragingly, Dell has realised that security is now a standard feature for business laptops, and has fully encrypted hard disks on the option list. Details have not been confirmed, but given the mention of Wave Embassy’s Trust Suite, used by admins to manage automatic boot encryption/decryption, we assume the hardware will be Seagate’s Momentus FDE.2 drives .

Support will also be included for smartcard/contactless smartcard readers, fingerprint readers, and TPM (trusted platform module) 1.2 at motherboard level.

It was probably inevitable that GPS technology would turn up on a mainstream laptop having found a home in at least one laptop from rival Asus, and, of course, a range of handheld computers. Exactly what laptop users will do with the technology, beyond providing a sort of SatNav-on-the-go, is harder to fathom. There is one security feature that might appeal however – letting security staff locate stolen laptops.

There will also be a more portable 14.1 inch model, the E6400. Prices have not been announced, but expect to pay a hefty premium for this laptop full of tricks.

SSD for laptops have high failure rate

Solid-state drive-based laptops are exhibiting alarming failure rates, according to Avian Security, a brokerage firm whose research covers the high-tech and aerospace industries.

Avian said that an unnamed large manufacturer is seeing return rates of 20 to 30 percent on SSD-based laptops, thanks to failures and performance issues.Returns due to technical failure ran at 10 to 20 percent, 10 times higher than failure rates for conventional drives, the report said. Another 10 percent were due to lack of expected performance gains, the report said. Flash-based SSDs are intended to be significantly faster than disk-based drives, due to factors such as the lack of moving parts.

The findings do not reflect well on the current trend toward SSD-based laptops. Offered by manufacturers such as Apple, Dell, Lenovo and Sony, they are significantly more expensive than conventional laptops, with the price tag justified by characteristics such as light weight, silence and fast data access speeds.

Dell, one of the manufacturers pushing SSD laptops most aggressively, declined to comment on failure rates, but a Dell spokeswoman admitted that "SSD technology is new and will have growing pains".

Nevertheless, Dell defended the technology and said its drawbacks are rapidly fading away. Capacity, at first limited to 32GB sizes, has now doubled, with 64GB drives available, and prices are expected to fall as the technology becomes more widely used, the company said.

In addition, while the first generation of SSDs performs near the levels of 5,400 RPM hard-disk drives, Dell last month announced out the faster Dell Flash Ultra Performance SSD, based on Samsung's SATA II-SSD technology, in 32GB and 64GB capacities.

The new drives deliver a 35 percent overall performance gain over a standard 2.5in 5400 RPM laptop hard drive using SYSmark '07, Dell said.

The latest generation of drives shows that manufacturers are improving performance and reliability without adding much to prices, Dell said.