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San Francisco, CA - At a Dell press event in San Francisco this morning, its Senior Vice President for the business products group, Jeffrey Clarke, filled in the biggest missing element in Dell's description of its completely redesigned Latitude product line to this point: Dell, he says, has developed a proprietary power cell technology that will enable Latitudes to run continuously while unplugged for at least 10 hours, and intermittently for as much as 19 hours straight.

The new battery technology will be implemented in all seven of Dell's new models, though it's likely that power consumption metrics will fluctuate between its standard mainstream model, its new widescreen model, and its new Latitude UMPC which may sip power more slowly.

Clarke told attendees at today's press event that, in recent discussions with Dell customers, their desires boiled down to four elements, number one being the need for longer battery life. Second on the list was a need for data security, especially in case of loss or theft; third is improved design (represented by a number of improvements including magnesium allow construction, keyboard backlighting, and optional Samsung solid-state disks across all models), and easier remote management by IT administrators.

The size of the external AC adapter has been reduced by half, Clarke added, and should be able to restore as much as 80% of battery power after one hour of being plugged in. And another enhancement is a built-in free-fall detector capable of parking the hard disk drives for falls as short as six inches.