Formula 1 racing is one of the most popular sports in the world. It is also one of the most, if not the most, technologically advanced sports in the world. If you follow the races, you know that the BMW Sauber team is ranked No. 1 with 30 points and its drivers, Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica, are ranked second and fourth respectively.
What you may not know is that Dell systems power the roving pit systems that are at every race. It is a foldable steel case that with built-in cooling that is wheeled in to a truck or plane and redeployed to the side of the track at every race. BWW Sauber F1 Team uses PowerEdge Servers and displays.
Given that I work on the team that develops Latitude notebooks, what I found cool is that a D830, our 15.4-inch corporate notebook, is used as the “brains” of the car. Before the drivers can start the car, the Latitude D830 is used to download a customized program designed for the environment of various tracks into the car’s systems – from the tight streets of Monaco, to the full-throttle track in Monza in Milan.
During the race, 100 sensors transmit data, everything from oil temperature to tire wear, through antennas on the car back to the pit area where a combination of the technologies deliver data to engineers then to driver via radio to optimize performance of the car and guys behind the wheel. The data also helps in post-race analysis to help the team continually improve.
When the team is out on the road, these systems have to stand up to environmental extremes while delivering optimal performance. Although I’m biased, the BWM Sauber F1 team has picked the best product from the best corporate notebook line in the industry for the job. That is a pretty bold statement. Let me make the case:
- Dell was first to market with SSD that provides up to five time more reliability and outpaces the performance of desktop drives as my colleague Sarah described here
- Longer battery life and shorter recharge times – beating HP’s 6510b by up to one hour and Latitude batteries charge 30 minutes faster than the closest competitor
- Industry-leading mobile broadband with 84 percent better download speeds than the Lenovo ThinkPad T60 and 82 percent better than the HP NC6400 based on antenna design and optimization
- Faster boot times that are 28 percent faster than the Lenovo T61
- We just completed a third-party study, which we’ll blog more about at a later date, that showed Dell Latitude in many cases outlasting competitors in durability tests
Some may say that our Latitude notebooks aren’t the raciest notebooks out there (I disagree). Let’s face it – it is an extremely dependable machine that stands up to the rigors of life and the D830 is doing right by the BMW Sauber F1 Team. And, trust me, the next generation of Latitude notebooks could redefine the look of business notebooks as we know them.
Give it to me – what are your thoughts?