Design and features
The common netbook platform has forced vendors to differentiate themselves in new ways, and so it's with the Latitude 2100 that the concept for the tiny laptops returns to its origin — something designed for the education market.
Dell has made a few tweaks to the system, from a rubberised layer on the top and bottom, which provides a scratch-resistant, high grip surface and protects against impact; to a light on the back that indicates to a teacher when a student is online; and a business-level warranty to make sure the school kids don't have to go without for too long should the netbooks break. There's even a strip of plastic on the back of the battery, under which you can either brand or put a student's name under, as well as a Kensington lock on each side where a custom-made strap can be plugged into, so the netbook can be worn like a satchel.
Externally, the most striking thing about the Latitude 2100 is the rubber outer shell, coming in primary blue, red or black, with the potential for the yellow and green colours available in the US to come out later. While it adds both to its vertical and weight profile, it gives the netbook a real feeling of ruggedness, which paired with an SSD would make it an excellent throw about notebook for the geeks out there.
The interior is pure Latitude — a serious business black with few frills, and only dedicated shortcut buttons for volume control. The keyboard, while not the antibacterial version sold in the States, is comfortable and easy to type quickly on. Three USB ports, a VGA port, gigabit Ethernet, headphone and microphone jacks round out the connectivity, along with 802.11n, Bluetooth, and a webcam at the top of the screen.
There is an optional extra, which is arguably the most interesting thing about the Latitude 2100 — its touchscreen.
Designed for fingers only (as a stylus is easily lost in the classroom), the 1024x576, 10.1-inch matte screen is reasonably accurate as a touch device once calibrated, although the inset screen can make it difficult to fit your finger in the corners. It'll certainly be interesting to see what Windows 7 brings to the table in terms of touch, given that it's already being positioned as a capable netbook OS.
The aforementioned indicator light is on the back of the screen, and lights up in white whenever a wireless connection is made. It's unfortunately no more granular than this, although Dell hopes to make it blink if other activity is going on. At this point in time, there's no way for the teacher to tell if the child is just on the school intranet, or fooling around on YouTube, just that they're connected. Hopefully by second-generation integration it will be a lot tighter with the operating system and various internet protocols, so the teacher can know if the kid is going outside of authorised websites, or using BitTorrent.
It's worth noting the base unit of the Latitude 2100, as it is the first notebook in Australia that Dell will sell with Ubuntu pre-installed. It comes with 1GB RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a three-cell battery and no webcam or touchscreen for AU$709. Our unit came with Windows XP Home, six-cell battery, touchscreen and webcam, however, upgrade costs at the time of writing (including SSDs) have yet to be determined.
Performance
We'd like to think most consumers are familiar by now with the capabilities of the netbook platform — it's really just capable of doing basic web browsing and light office tasks. This makes it excellent as a second notebook or something you can tote around anywhere thanks to its connectivity, long battery life and lightness.
More important seems to be the battery life, to which the Dell held up well with its six-cell, lasting four hours, 59 minutes with all power-saving features turned off, screen brightness and volume set to maximum and an Xvid file played back.
The Latitude 2100 is an interesting answer to customising for the needs of schools. As a by-product, Dell has created a robust little netbook that can just as easily be tossed around by any techie who likes to work roughly. We like it — although we'd suggest a second revision might come around before schools are ready to purchase.
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