View this article at: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/08/12/dell.precisions.slip/

Tuesday, Aug 12, 2008 11:10am

New Dell Precisions slip on...

Dell today accidentally tipped its hand early by revealing its new Precision line of notebooks ahead of an expected announcement today. The new design is targeted not just at pro workers but also the design conscious and involves a sleeker, minimalist design with colored shells. The systems also have performance unparalleled even among newer notebooks, Dell claims: the systems have the choice of Intel's new quad-core mobile chips, two 500GB hard drives in RAID, and a presently unmatched 16GB of total DDR3 memory.

As with similar offerings by HP and Lenovo, color accuracy is considered essential. A 17-inch model will have an LED-backlit LCD that covers 100 percent of the Adobe color space, suiting it to visual editing. This larger system will support up to 1GB of video memory and is likely to involve NVIDIA's Quadro FX 3700M graphics chip.

A jog wheel is also unique to the design and lets video editors scrub through footage or 3D modelers dial in specific settings more accurately than with a trackpad.

Dell so far has only slipped word of two systems. The M4400 is likely to be a replacement for the 15.4-inch M4300 and keep the same screen size while likely limiting memory and graphics choices; the M2400 would replace the 14-inch M2300 and should use lower-power video such as the Quadro FX 370M. Other versions and complete details should appear later today.