Dell Designing Developer Oriented Laptop

jones_supa writes "Barton George, director of marketing for Dell's Web vertical reveals information about 'Project Sputnik', a laptop tailored for developer needs in web companies. 'We want to find ways to make the developer experience as powerful and simple as possible. And what better way to do that than beginning with a laptop that is both highly mobile and extremely stylish, running the 12.04 LTS release of Ubuntu Linux,' George ponders. He also gives a quick list of packages that the default installation could include. The machine will base on the XPS13, assessing a couple of its main hardware deficiencies along the way." According to the article, this is a "6 month project to investigate an Ubuntu laptop. If successful, we have big plans for the effort." It's unclear how closely they are working with upstream, but there's mention of Canonical as a commercial partner so this may mean Dell is working to ensure some of their hardware Just Works (tm) with Ubuntu. The software side is so far just a customized install with developer tools preinstalled. Ars remains skeptical about Dell's strategy for GNU/Linux support, which may be warranted given their track record.

Re:Resolution

[CastrTroy]

I agree with this. Also, most of the other important developer friendly things would be in the hardware, not the software. Many developers are likely to wipe the thing and start over from scratch anyway. Important things for developers are good screen resolution. Standard keyboard layout. this includes ensuring that function keys (F1-F12) always act as function keys, and also that pgup ins and the like are located in an easy to reach place Depending on the developer, you might be better off dropping the numeric pad so that you can fit the pgup/arrow keys in the correct arrangement. Also of importance is plenty of USB ports to hook up additional hardware without a hub, as well as outputs for a couple different kinds of monitors HDMI/DVI and possibly VGA. Developers don't care about what packages are included by default, because they can install whatever they want after the fact. The things they can't change later, like hardware, are the things to focus on.

Re:Language

[aethelrick]

They're both correct (as much as a constantly evolving language can be). They were both independently derived from the same French word "orienter" which is a verb as it happens. Orient was first used in the 1700s and Orientate was first used in the 1800s. One was not derived from the other. Pedants begone!

Re:Resolution

[MobyDisk]

Agreed.

People often give me odd looks when I open my 17" Macbook Pro and boot to Windows, there is a reason it was rated "Best Windows laptop" a few years ago. It is usually high-end, lightweight, with a 1920x1200 display. The manufacturer supports OS X and Windows on it. Last time I looked I did not see a comparable offering from Dell, even at the same price.

My only complaint is that it isn't quite good enough for gaming.