Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC First Impressions

The Dell Latitude XT Tablet arrived just a few hours ago. I’ve already recorded the unboxing and will be posting that up later tonight / tomorrow. Here are some fresh first impressions after just opening the box a few hours ago.

• I love the crisp look of the tablet: black, silver, and a nice charcoal finish. It is very professional looking and well designed.
• It is thicker and heavier than I imagined. The screen feels thicker than the Lenovo X61, but I put the screens side by side and they are exactly the same thickness. Go figure.
• Even though it feels thicker than I imagined, it fits quite nicely in the Tom Bihn Ristretto Messenger bag. The Lenovo X61 would not fit in there without some major pushing. So, I’m really stoked that the Ristretto and the XT are a good match.
• It rotates back and forth into landscape / portrait much quicker than other tablets I’ve used.
• The DLV screen is very bright and crisp.
• As I mention in the unboxing video, there is graph paper type grid that is slightly visible when the display is dim and looking at it from an angle. This must be the N-Trig digitizer because I’ve not seen that type of grid before on any other tablet. It can be seen at various angles when holding the tablet. Seeing that grid will take a little getting used to.
• It is very, very soft to the touch, but I’ve not experienced any vectoring issues using the active digitizer pen. I barely have to touch the screen at all to activate a button. I’ve not experienced hardly any fingerprint issues that one normally experiences with a view anywhere / bright screen. The fingerprints are there as one would expect, but nothing like the X61 SXGA or Motion LE1700 VA. I was a little worried about that part and am quite pleased to see that I now have the best of both worlds: bright, outdoor viewable screen and no finger print issues.
• The pen came with 6 tips: 3 blue and 3 black. The blue tip felt like writing on a matte / paper like finish, and was not as fluid as I like. I switched to the black tip, and it felt much more comfortable to write on.
• The keyboard feels very, very nice to type on. I really like the track stick in the center of this keyboard. It is almost flush with the keys, so as to not interfere with typing. Other tablets I’ve used, like the 2710p, has a track stick that gets in the way of typing it sticks up so high.
• About 76 running processes out of the box. I have the 64 GB SSD – 45.8 GB of free space remaining. There is a 2 GB recovery partition, too. I ordered it with 2 GB of RAM, but the system is only reporting 1.75 GB.
• The XT came pre-installed with Google Desktop. Why not utilized Vista’s built-in search? Google Desktop is coming off. Other than that, it is remarkably crapware free!
• I don’t think I’ve ever received a Tablet PC with so many boxes. I must have 5 – 6 decent sized boxes – seriously. I would have thought I ordered a mini-tower desktop and a monitor.
• Interesting battery life enhancement – when I unplugged from AC, I got a message that my internal network was deactivated to help with battery life. I plugged back in and was told my Internal network card was made active again. I then got a Microsoft Windows Internal Network Card Power Management Dialog error. The error happens every time I plug back in from being on battery. I’ll have dig in and see what is causing that problem.

Stay tuned for the unboxing video and more usage articles over the coming days as I put the XT to the real test – actual usage.