How much will these machines cost, and how little RAM and SSD storage will they have?

Also, screen resolution. Some of these larger laptops have pathetic 1920x1080 displays, which I find completely unsuitable for the kind of work I have to do, and an external monitor is not always an option.

Not sure if this is still true, but on my existing Precision laptop, the discrete Nvidia GPU only gets used under special cases, e.g. if an application is specifically configured to use the Nvidia GPU; otherwise, the integrated Intel Iris GPU is used. More annoying is the fact that the Nvidia GPU is simply not used when I have an external monitor plugged in, which is the stupidest design decision I can imagine, as that's precisely the time when I want it.

Separately, including 64 GB of RAM in the ultralight notebooks seems really pointless. How many people need that much RAM, and how much does it needlessly drive up the cost?

I have an old xps and an old Lenovo P1, both bought because of having a 4k screen, for CAD and blender work. I don't understand why anyone would buy a "premium" laptop with anything less than a 3k screen. As for discreet GPUs, doesn't the Nvidia app thingy under windows allow you to specify that a given bit of software will use the discreet GPU? This is definitely possible under Linux (using bumblebee, Optimus or similar), although on my laptops, I have to use an older Nvidia driver, the latest ones knacker suspend and hibernate.

Some of these larger laptops have pathetic 1920x1080 displays

Most of our users are now preferring larger displays (we've gone from 14" standard to 16") but are quite happy with 1920x1080 (or 1920x1200) resolution - largely due to ageing eyesight!

I can see that in many roles a much higher resolution is needed though so that needs to be an option at a sensible price.

If you need to ask you can not afford it.

64GB the other day was almost 800Euro option.

Completely crap Keyboard, they did not have enough room for a proper size keyboard with number pad, so they shrunk down all the keys to accommodate the bloody number pad. I keep hitting 4 instead of Enter, grrr4

And gave me 1/2 height cursor keys!4

I do have a dedicated key to bring up the calculator, a CE key and a +/- key, thank god for that!.4

I don't understand how they can do this, do they not test keyboard layouts? Is it the same people who make the design decisions that gave us Windows 11?

Yes.

And no mouse button . . . . . what's the world coming to!

Thankfully my old Precision M6800 and brace of 7520's have proved virtually indestructible & still retain enough poke for CGI work. They will likely see me out.

Shrinking down the bulk, and making it last longer.... hmmm, looks awfully like we are moving to mandatory thin client computing, doesn't it?

Holding on to my i7 32GB Latitude here, you can prise it from my cold dead hands

After many years of having Dell as our main laptop supplier we've changed, we've had too many fail within 2-3 years and getting warranty service with people on the road is difficult and inconvenient.

"higher numbers signifying better build quality"

I call BS on that unless it is a particular definition of build quality - different materials for the chassis and case perhaps - but why would you do that? Cheaper to use the same bits where possible. I suspect a marketing justification for the price differential/

G

I still don't understand why they got rid of the Latitude branding.... Generally pretty solid machines, and if you need something with a bit more oomph, you could just buy a precision or an XPS, depending on your use case. I've been buying second hand Dells for about 15 years, but needed a couple of brand new laptops in summer last year for my kids (starting at college and university) and found the new Dell laptop branding too difficult to navigate, so bought Lenovo thinkpad and thinkbook laptops instead. Also, when I bought the Lenovos, their laptop configurator was a lot better than the Dell one.

Oh, and are Dells still being sold in that awful silver finish that rubs off in no time?

And the 'new' 3,5 and 7 categories sounds very similar to the Latitude 3xxx, 5xxx and 7xxx!

We normally bought the 5xxx ones, which as you say have on recent models had that crap silver coating which rubs off at the edges and gets chipped (and the plastic underneath is black, so very visible when this happens). The plastic screen back is also too flimsy and we've had a few broken screens simply from pressure applied to the lid when closed (e.g. in an over-filled bag). The first of the 'new' range (Pro Plus PB14250) are a definite improvement - aluminium screen back which doesn't flex, and although they still have a silver coating this is much less prone to scratches and rubbing off at the edges.

From the photos in the article it looks like this year's models are a darker colour, which is no bad thing - it wasn't clear why they moved away from black in the first place.