Dell claim it's all about the technology
We, along with everyone else, had hoped that Dell's Latitude XT would help bring tablet PCs a giant step forward. When the computer manufacturer made the product official earlier in the month however, we struggled to understand the hefty $2,500 price tag slapped on the product.
Following numerous complaints and ongoing discussion at its own blog, Dell has stepped forward to try and explain how the pricing came about.
Glenn Keels, Senior Manager of Dell's Commercial Products Team said on the official Direct2Dell blog:
"So here's what I have to say on the issue. Probably the most important thing to note about tablet PCs is that we are talking about cutting-edge technology here. If we just released the exact same technology as our competitors, we would be missing opportunities to drive this market to the next level - and this is an opportunity we did not want to miss. The result is that our product does carry a slight premium to our competition (emphasis on the word "slight")."
"We performed a price and feature compare with the Latitude XT, the HP 2710p and the Lenovo X61t. Overall, what I found was that when you adjust for non-standard features such as Dell's standard 3 year standard warranty, the overall price delta was between 8-13%. And while this amount is not trivial, the Latitude XT more that makes up for the difference with additional features customers have told us matter most to them. I have summarised some of these in the table below:"
According to Mr Keels, "capacitive touch is key" and "it's all about the technology". We hear you Mr Keels and we're all for new technology, but Lenovo do offer better hardware specifications for the money. The capacitive touch will need to be all singing all dancing to stand any chance of justifying the price tag associated with it.
Source: Direct2Dell Blog
