Dell Launches New Notebooks, Tablets Aimed at the Educational Market

Dell has launched new tablets and notebooks aimed at the educational market. The Chromebook 11 and the Latitude 11 Education Series are “schoolyard tough” notebooks that has survived MIL-STD 810G testing for shock, vibrations, pressure, and temperatures, while the Venue 10 and Venue 10 Pro tablets, with the introduced devices all including rubberized trim for added protection.

The Chromebook has an 11-inch 1366×768-resolution display on a 180-degree hinge with optional touch capabilities, with a rear-mounted “activity light” for use in classrooms to denote the status of tasks or to silently request help. Inside is an Intel Celeron processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, with the option to increase to 4GB. While battery life is said to extend to ten hours, connectivity is provided over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Dell is starting the Chromebook 11 at $250, and it is available now.

Effectively similar in terms of construction to the Chromebook, the Latitude 11 Education Series runs on Windows rather than Chrome OS. Selling for $300 to educational customers, Dell aims to ship the non-touch version from March 3, with the touch-enabled model due in late June.

The Dell Venue 10 and Dell Venue 10 Pro perform a similar trick in offering the same hardware with different software, with the Venue 10 running Android Lollipop and the Pro running Windows 8. Combined with a keyboard dock, the tablets use a quad-core Intel Atom processor with 2GB of RAM and start with 64GB of storage. Shipping with a 10.1-inch HD or Full HD screen, depending on configuration, as well as a ten-hour battery life, the only other difference between the two is the inclusion of NFC on the Android model.

The Venue 10 Pro will be going on sale from March 3 starting from $330 for the tablet alone, $380 with the keyboard. The Android-based Venue 10 will be going on sale this spring.