Back in May, Dell announced that it was working on an experimental laptop built for developers. Now, the company says it has received so much positive feedback that it plans to launch the laptop, codenamed Sputnik, this fall. “When I first put the word out I thought it would be a success if I got 4,000 hits on the proposal. It’s now over 50,000 hits, ” said Dell’s Barton George.
Sputnik is based on a Dell XPS 13 laptop equipped with Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS). It will support cloud development by making it easy to create “microclouds” on the laptop, which can then be easily exported to actual cloud computing environments, including Amazon, OpenStack and Azure. The laptop will also include “profiles,” pre-configured setups that include all the typical applications and tools that developers need to work in a particular language or environment. Initially, Dell will offer three profiles: JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, and Android.
The Sputnik laptop will likely cost around $1,500.
