Dell bringing improved Sputnik to Europe

Dell has announced a higher resolution screen version of its Sputnik laptop, an Intel i7 Ultrabook supplied with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and aimed at developers, that it will be making it available outside the US and Canada. The screen on the new Sputnik 2 is 1920x1080, a far higher and more developer-friendly resolution than the Sputnik 1's 1366x768 display.

The other specifications of the Sputnik 2 are unchanged; a low-voltage Ivy Bridge i7-3537U processor, Intel HD4000 graphics, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The new unit's US price has risen by $50 to $1549, but interestingly this appears to be $50 less than a similar XPS 13 with Windows.

Dell already has the Sputnik 2, aka the XPS 13 Developer Edition, available in the US online store and over the coming weeks will roll out the Sputnik 2 for sale online in the UK, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The company has yet to announce pricing for the European version of the Ubuntu-running laptop though. Dell reps will also be able to sell the Sputnik 2 in Israel, Luxembourg, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and the UAE, and the company is considering launching the laptop in Australia and Asia.

Dell does admit that it didn't pay enough attention to working on the associated Profile tool and Cloud Launcher software which it delivered with the original Sputnik: "We will soon be taking the Profile Tool effort off of pause" says the announcement. Dell is working on a new version of the Cloud Launcher software which drops Ubuntu's Juju; Dell has been working with Opscode on a Chef-based launcher to work with Dell Cloud, Dell's public cloud service.

(djwm)