Rex Baldazo
Dell's Latitude line of laptops has been a remarkable resurgence for a company so thoroughly out of the laptop business a few years ago. The new
Latitude XPi
combines 75- and 90-MHz Pentium power with Dell's renowned battery life. We tested the XPi P90T, which uses Intel's new low-voltage 90-MHz Pentium. The P90T has an active-matrix TFT screen, and our test unit came with 16 MB of RAM and an 810-MB hard drive.
The XPi P90T is smart and aggressive about stretching its battery life -- so much so that it confounded our Thumper 2 battery tester. On a recent trip from Manchester, New Hampshire, to San Francisco, we used the XPi for at least 3 hours' worth of editing, and there was battery life to spare when we
arrived in California.
The low-voltage Pentium is designed specifically for mobile applications and runs at 3.3 V externally but at just 2.9 V internally. As a result, it runs cooler than previous 90-MHz Pentiums and consumes less power. Combined with high-power lithium-ion batteries, this gives the P90T remarkable battery life. These low-voltage Pentiums will soon show up in everyone's laptops, but Dell's Latitude XPi P90T is one of the first to have them.
The XPi is not perfect. It lacks some features that we've come to expect in high-end laptops, such as built-in sound support. And it was disappointing that the screen supports only 640- by 480-pixel resolution. But for people who need to do serious work during long plane rides, the XPi is just about perfect.
Contact: Dell Computer, Austin, TX, (800) 289-3355 or (512) 338-4400,
http://www.dell.com/
Performance
Integer index
.99
Floating-Point index 1.12
(A 90-MHz Dell Pentium = 1)
photo_link (29 Kbytes)
Latitude XPi P90T (90-MHz Pentium, active-matrix TFT screen). As tested, with 16 MB of RAM and an 810-MB hard drive, $5398; base configuration, with 8 MB of RAM and a 340-MB hard drive, $4699.
Impressive Battery Life in a Laptop Pentium PC
