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We received our first Latitude E Series today. Since we’ve been so familiar with the D610, 620, and 630s since 2002, the E Series is an entirely new direction for us. Will this laptop be our new standard? We’ll see.

First impressions are that the laptop has a very “Mac” feel to it, and that isn’t a bad thing.  Some people might be confused by what I mean by “Mac” feel.  There just seem to be a few design areas where Dell has taken cues from Apple.  For example, the E series has removed the visible hinges and the backlit keyboard makes me think of the Macbook Pro.   The LED display and backlit keyboard are very nice, and the device is lighter than expected.  Overall though, the general impression is that there isn’t a “wow” factor about the machine.  That’s not surprising, since Dell positions the Latitude line for the business road warrior, not the hipster college kid.

The cover has a bit of a woodgrain looks to it, not sure if that is visible in the photo above.

Overall, it seems like nice new package.  Once we get it on and running, we’ll find out how good it really is.

(UPDATE)  Upon booting the system into Windows XP, the battery indicator is showing almost 8 hours of remaining battery life.  True?  We’ll find out and let you know.