Dell Debuts New Gear

Dell on Tuesday unveiled new portable computers for corporate customers. Its Latitude line of notebook computers got three new entrants: the D410, D610, and D810.

The smallest, the D410, weighs 3.83 pounds and has a starting price of $1,677. Its new black-and-silver chassis is intended to blunt criticism that Dell machines are somewhat drab in appearance, says Sam Bhavnani, an analyst at market-research firm Current Analysis.

All three notebooks have an optional extended battery offering nine hours of uninterrupted usage.

Dell added two new products, the M20 and M70, to its Precision line of high-performance mobile workstations. It also added Weekend Notebook Exchange to its umbrella of managed-deployment services. The program enables users who drop off old machines on a Friday to receive new ones by Monday, with Dell technicians performing software installation and transferring data from the old to the new system over the weekend.