By Monica Alleven
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Dell is betting that location services will be a hit in netbooks, too. Starting next week, the company will offer the Dell Wireless 700 location solution for its Mini 10 network.
The hardware is part of an internal GPS card with built-in Wi-Fi location positioning, according to a company blog. The technology can use Wi-Fi to calculate positioning indoors, and GPS for outdoors. The 700 is powered by Broadcom’s A-GPS and Skyhook Wireless’ Wi-Fi positioning solutions.
Skyhook says its same engine is deployed in millions of Apple iPhones and iPod touch devices.
Initially, two apps will be offered with the Dell Wireless 700 location solution: CoPilot and the Loki Dashboard. CoPilot gives turn-by-turn driving directions and local search of key interest points. Loki Dashboard is a Web portal that uses the netbook’s location engine to customize widgets for news, weather, photos, tweets, events and nearby people.
The Mini 10 is Dell’s first system with the optional Dell 700 wireless location solution.
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Dell is working on a mobile Internet device (MID) based on the Android platform.