Dell debuts reworked Vostro notebook

Designing according to consumer feedback, and even taking a little inspiration from Apple, Round Rock, Texas' Dell debuted its redesigned Vostro small business laptop.

The new release is part of a larger undertaking by Dell to expand its laptop portfolio by 50 percent during the year. Europe, the Middle East and Africa will be able to purchase the laptops Tuesday, while a launch is scheduled in the Americas for May 1, and the Asia-Pacific region on May 5.Dell says the redesign has a lot to do with customer feedback that it received for the previous slate of Vostro laptops. Business consumers are looking for a lighter and thinner laptop like those offered by Lenovo, LG, Sony, Apple and Toshiba, but at a more affordable price.

"We paid attention," Dell SMB chief Frank Muehleman said.

Many low-profile notebooks on the market today are actually among the most expensive. Lenovo's X300 starts at $2,799, and Toshiba's Portege R500 starts at $2,099. Both Sony's Vaio TZ series and Apple's MacBook Air start at $1,799, buyers would be able to purchase three of the cheapest Vostros for that price.

Of course, compared to some of these notebooks, Vostros are behemoths at over an inch in thickness. Then again, the Vostro is meant as a budget business system -- so a fraction of an inch in size difference may be an unfair basis of comparison.

Either way, the new laptops feature a sleeker design, with a slot-loading optical drive. The Vostro 1310, sporting a 13.3 inch screen, has 94 percent of the viewing area of a 14.1-inch model, yet weighs 20 percent less, the company said.

Dell's inclusion of a low-cost, highly portable notebook addresses the changing face of business and home computing, where users have two systems. The user's "desktop" computer is increasingly a full-featured notebook, and the mobile system is a unit both light in weight and in features.