Dell Debuts Latitude 13

Dell today launched the Latitude 13, a product they hope will catch the eye of the upper end of the business market. On a busy day, the latest version of its 17-inch Precision M6500 mobile workstation was also produced, adding options such as dual-core Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors and an RGB display.

The new Precision M6500

Essentially a rebranded Vostro 1310, the Latitude 13 includes Dell’s ImageDirect services, which allows IT users to create, update, and deploy customer images to a whole fleet of Latitude 13s. Laptopmag notes that whereas the V13, like other Vostros, was designed to help businesses without IT departments help themselves, “The Latitude 13 comes tailor-made for IT managers, complete with TPM circuitry and virtualization-ready configurations”.

The sub-€1000 Core i3 Build

So, with the recent release of Intel’s latest line of processors, the Core i3 line, we’ve had an awful lot of requests from people hoping we’d put together a solid Core i3 build on a reasonable budget. I was going to ask Ryan from our RMA department about this, but then I remembered that every time I say the word “budget” he tries to fit as much as humanly possible into the build.

Instead, myself and the entirely more reasonably minded and generally stable Shelton sat down and went over the various bits and pieces we’d like to see in a Core i3 build with a vague budget of €1,000. We initially agreed to be a little loose with the budget, but Shelton decided to get strict when we were over by three cent…

Anyway, without any further delay, here’s the build we’ve come up with 🙂

CPU:

The CPU is what’s prompted this whole build, so we figured it might be best to make sure we got it out of the way as early as possible. It’s an Intel Core i3-540, which will probably say enough to those of you who’ve been keeping a close eye on it, but for those who haven’t bear with us.

Click through to check out our page on Intel's Core i3 🙂

The Core i3-540 is a dual core, socket 1156 processor with a 4MB L3 cache. It’s a solid arrangement, but for those who are interested in getting as much detail as possible, you’d do well to check out this (quite long winded) but very in-depth piece from XbitLabs, which goes into a tremendous amount of detail about Intel’s current processor line up.

Aside from all that, the Core i3-540 weighs in at €135.

Acer Shows Off 3D Notebook

Acer has taken the opportunity at CES this year to show off two new notebooks, the most interesting of which will likely be the one that manages to be “3D capable.”

TomsHardware is reporting that the two new notebooks boast up to 8GB of RAM, and give users the option of Intel’s Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 processors, which is curious enough in itself. The devices will be available in either a 15.6” or a 17.3” form factor, with screens resolutions weighing in at 1366×768 and 1600×900 respectively. Indeed, it’s all a little ho-hum (if high-performance) until you get to the graphics arrangement.

Special Offers – Week of January 11th

Good afternoon all, hopefully we find you well this rainy, suspiciously snowless Monday afternoon. It’s nice to see that the “much worse” that was “still to come” on Friday hasn’t quite materialised, leaving us with a pleasant (if somewhat rainy) week ahead of us.

As anyone who reads the blog regularly will know, we like to post the special offers for the coming week on a Monday afternoon; it gives everyone the longest possible time to consider a purchase while the price is knocked down, which is always nice 🙂

Anyway, without any more delay, this week our special offers are on RAM, an upgrade kit and a media player.

4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600MHz

Corsair’s Dominator is a solid RAM kit, with a full 4GB (that’s on two 2GB sticks) that shouldn’t break the bank. Still, it’s not on the low end of the performance scale.

Click through to see our page for the Corsair Dominator 4GB kit 🙂

Considering the performance, it’s nice to see Corsair’s Dominator on special offer, with the price dropped by 7%. Of course, it’s not for everyone, with high-end memory there will always be those whose machines don’t support it. In this case, you’re going to want to make sure that your motherboard supports DDR3, but aside from that you should be good to go.

It’s also worth mentioning that whenever we do a PC build, one of the guys in RMA (whether Ryan or Shetlon) will always advise that we roll with Corsair RAM, since they’re a reliable company with a solid reputation when it comes to memory. It might seem like a relatively small thing when you’re considering performance and a multitude of other things in your build… but it can save headaches later.

For this week, Corsair’s Dominator DDR3 1600MHz 4G kit will set you back €128.47.