Dell Latitude D610 Series Review

The Dell Latitude D610 is not available through the Home & Home Office section on Dell's site, but through the Business sections of the site. This particular one was purchased through the Dell Small Business section. The Latitude D610 Series is basically your mainstream, thin & light, business notebook. The D610 is ready for any road you may travel. This mainstream business notebook is built for serious mobile performance, incorporating Intel's latest-generation Centrino platform. It's also fairly light (5.4 pounds) and has very good battery life (4 hours)—a winning combination for busy road warriors.

The Latitude D610 is designed for enterprise customers who want flexibility, mobility and convenience in the workplace. These are customers looking for a durable notebook offering the ideal blend features and performance. Starting at less than five pounds, the D610 delivers all the performance you need. Nothing You Don't. All at your fingertips.

Dell Latitude D610 Review Unit System Specs

• Pentium M 760 (2.00Ghz w/ 533Mhz FSB)
• 512MB (2×256) PC3200-DDR2 (400Mhz)
• 14.1″ SXGA+ (1400×1050 resolution)
• ATI Mobility Radeon X300 w/ 64MB dedicated RAM
• Fujitsu 60GB HD (5400RPM)
• 8x DVD+/-RW (dual layer)
• Intel Pro 2200 wireless (802.11 b/g)
• Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet; Conexant 56K modem
• SigmaTel C-Major audio
• Extra AC adapter & extra modular battery
• System total was $1940 after shipping & WA state sales tax

Processor & Performance

The latitude D610 incorporates the latest "Sonoma" version of the Intel Centrino.   I had high hopes that this machine would fly, and indeed, the D610 seems very responsive & performs well for what I do.  As mentioned above, I'll often have powerpoint, photoshop, deepview (molecular image viewer), word, several instances of firefox, thunderbird, winamp, and a few other applications thrown in for good measure open at the same time.  The old Presario would definitely bog-down, especially with graphics intensive apps such as deepview and specific powerpoint slides.  So far the Dell Latitude D610 Series battery has sailed through everything I've thrown at it.  It hasn't crashed yet — although windows explorer hangs from time to time (doesn't it always).  I'm not much of a gamer, although I did download a copy of the Quake3 demo to see how it would run.  I'll list the Quake3 results in the benchmarks section below.

Another common use for my notebook is to rip and encode music.  I prefer Exact Audio Copy configured to encode with the LAME engine.  My "benchmark" here is that the supplied DVD RW drive seems to be able to rip at up to about 7.5x (although it takes a while to get going that fast), and the encoding occurs at a "play/CPU" of about 10x (meaning a 10 minute song is encoded in about 1 minute).  All together an hour-long CD is ripped & encoded to high quality VBR mp3 files in about 15 minutes.

Hardware specifications

1. Model: Dell Latitude D610
2. Processor: Intel Pentium M 760 - Dothan - 2 GHz - 2 MB Cache - 533 MHz FSB
3. Chipset: Intel 915GM - ICH6 - Sonoma Centrino
4. Memory: 1 GB 533 MHz DDR2 Dual Channel in 2 SDRAM modules
5. Hard-drive: 80 GB - 5,400 RPM - Fujitsu MHV2080AH - UDMA133 via S-ATA controller
6. Optical drive: Single Layer DVD±R/RW burner - Sony DW-D56A (OEM Liteon SOSW-852S) via S-ATA - 8X DVD - 24X CD
7. Wired network: 10/100/1000BaseT Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
8. Wireless network: Intel PRO/wireless 2915 A/B/G
9. Bluetooth: Dell Truemobile 350 via USB
10. Video:Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 with up to 128MB shared1 graphics memory
11. Display: 14.1″ SXGA+ (1400×1050) active matrix (TFT)
12. Audio: Intel AC'97 with Sigmatel STAC9750/51
13. Internal modem: Intel AC'97 with Conexant chip
14. Ports: 4 USB 2.0; S-Video; VGA; Serial; Parallel; Infrared; Ethernet(10/100/1000); Modem; Audio In/Out; 1 Type I/II PCMCIA
15. Security: Integrated Smart Card Reader and integrated TPM Security Chip
16. Desk docking: D-port with DVI video and D-view
17. External screen: Dell 2405FPW LCD, 1920×1200
18. Battery Cell: Rechargeable li-ion 6-cell latitude d610 series battery

Dell XPS M1330 Review

Dell XPS laptops have been known to pull off performance feats usually associated with desktops. The Dell XPS M1210 (Vista), for instance, has embodied what performance should be like in an ultraportable. But what started off as a stylish design two years ago is now quickly losing ground to trendsetters such as Apple, HP, and Sony. Clearly, it was time for Dell to spice things up. The Dell XPS M1330 ($2,200 direct) is both refreshing and really quite amazing once you factor in both design and performance. Dell slips all the latest technology trends into a very sleek crimson unit while keeping its performance ahead of the competition. It's a breakthrough improvement, which is why I'm giving it the Editors' Choice in the ultraportable category.

If any single notebook can bring Dell out of its recent slump, the XPS M1330 is it. This portable's combination of light weight, stylish design, powerful performance, and built-in mobile broadband makes it a top choice for business travelers and hipsters alike (view photo gallery). Add in a stellar screen and keyboard and long battery life, and you have one of the top contenders for notebook of the year.
 
The M1330's soft-touch, crimson exterior is a new look for Dell, but the round logo on the lid is reminiscent of the one on the XPS M1210, this system's predecessor. Only 4.8 pounds (or as light as 4 pounds, depending on the battery), our configuration came with a built-in webcam, nine-cell battery, and travel remote. Although the VGA webcam no longer swivels as it did on the M1210, this one comes with tons of capabilities via software, including pan and zoom, face tracking, and special effects. All the webcam features worked reasonably well, and the picture was bright and clear, albeit washed out.
 
Along the right side you'll find an ExpressCard slot (with a mini remote control inside), a slot-loading DVD+/-RW drive, a Wi-Fi Catcher, and one USB 2.0 port. The left side houses another USB port, along with FireWire, VGA, Ethernet, and HDMI ports. An 8-in-1 memory card reader, dual headphones jacks, and a microphone jack grace the front.

Specification:

Core 2 Duo T7100 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache
2×1GB DDR2-667 RAM
13.3″ widescreen LED backlit display WXGA (1280×800) with VGA webcam
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS 128MB GDDR3
120GB 5400RPM HDD (Hitachi 5K160 series, 8MB cache)
8X DVD+-RW slot load ODD
Intel Pro/Wireless 3945abg
Fingerprint reader
6-cell and 9-cell batteries
Microsoft Vista Home Premium
Dimensions: 12.5″ (31.8cm) x 9.4″ (23.8cm) x 0.87″-1.33″ (2.21cm-3.38cm)
Weight: 3.97 lbs w/ 4-cell, 4.3lbs w/ 6-cell

Introduction

Dell launched the new line of Inspiron laptops and desktops with much fanfare on June 26th, 2007 at a Macy's department store in New York. The flagship laptop, the dell XPS M1330 battery, garnered a lot of press coverage. The launch coincided with a revamping of Dell's marketing efforts in an attempt to lose the 'beige-box' manufacturer cachet and move more upstream by making the brand more appealing to a wider demographic.

Aside from the redesigns to the notebook line-up, Dell was also touting the multitude of colored lids that the new laptops would ship with, allowing a bit of personalization by customers. In addition, the XPS M1330 was touted as the thinnest 13.3″ notebook and boasted a radically new design for Dell, challenging manufacturers such as Sony and Apple, who were traditionally viewed as more 'stylish' companies, known for their design. There was substantial press coverage for the launch as well as for the new product line, something that hasn't been terribly common for Dell in recent memory. After years of building my own computers, I decided to give Dell a try and ordered the XPS M1330.

The XPS M1330 battery with its 13.3″ widescreen display falls somewhere between the thin-and-light and ultra-portable categories. Its weight, at just under 4 lbs with the 4-cell battery and LED backlit display, puts it squarely in ultra-portable space, but its relatively large footprint means it's not an ultra-portable in the strictest sense of the word. Nevertheless, at under 0.9 inches thick at its thinnest point, with the LED backlit display, it's a very stylish and small laptop, convenient for carrying around and using in all but the tightest of spaces.

The good:
Thin, sexy design; strong performance; backlit-LED display; included media remote control.

The bad:
Small touchpad; some options (SSD hard drives, Blu-ray) not available yet; not as many color options as Dell's new Inspiron line.

The bottom line:
Dell has finally put design first with the head-turning XPS M1330 laptop, emphasizing both the "thin" and "light" aspects of the thin-and-light category without sacrificing features or performance.