With Dell very much a private company again, the PC maker wants to hit the ground running with Windows 8.1, Microsoft’s first ever refresh of its modern operating system.
Competitors have been announcing new computers and tablets left and right — and Dell has also joined the party by making official some new Windows 8.1 notebooks and slates that are due to land of store shelves in the next few weeks.
The company had scheduled an event for October 2, and although it was reported earlier that Dell would be bringing to market at least one Windows RT device, none seem to have made the cut.
Dell’s press release talks about the Dell XPS 11, which was first revealed back in June. The 2.5-pound notebook-tablet hybrid is expected to be released in November, and comes with a screen that rotates almost 360 degrees, meaning it can be used exclusively as a touchscreen device.
It has an 11.6-inch display with a resolution of 2560 by 1440, and a starting price of $999.
Also part of the announcement are a couple of XPS notebooks — 13.3 and 15.6 inch models. The XPS 13 for instance weighs in less than 3 pounds, while the 4.44 pound XPS 15 offers an elaborate display resolution of 3200 by 1800. Prices of these high-end laptops start at $999 and $1,499 respectively.
Two new Windows 8.1 tablets are also in the mix.
One is the 8-inch Venue 8 Pro that was made official a few week back. It comes with an Intel Atom Bay Trail processor, 1280 by 800 display resolution, 2GB of memory and 32GB storage. Office 2013 Home and Student comes preloaded, and the device is due out on October 18 for $299.
The other Windows 8.1 slate is the Venue 11 Pro, with a 10.8-inch screen and a full HD 1920 by 1080 pixels resolution. Users have a choice of either an Intel Atom Bay Trail or Haswell Core i5 processor, and the device can make use of up to 8GB or RAM and up to 256GB of storage.
This tablet is due out in November, with prices starting at $499.
