PC
Magazine has taken Dell's entrant in the 15-inch Core Duo laptop category for a spin, and although it doesn't knock the
IBM Lenovo Thinkpad T60 from its Editor's Choice throne, it still manages to grab four out of five
stars and a "very good" rating. As you'll probably recall from our
previous coverage of this model and the
D620, the D820 is a Core Duo-packing
replacement for the
Latitude D810, and its
2.16GHz T2600 bested the older model by an impressive 59% in PC Mag's benchmarks. Also noteworthy were the pixel-rific
1920 x 1200 widescreen display (remember, those are packed into just a 15.4-inch screen), 5 hour battery life, and
built-in WiFi sniffer that not only works when the machine is shutdown but helpfully informs you when security-disabled
networks are in range. Overall, the theme for this $1,300 desktop replacement seems to be choice; you have the option
of: a fingerprint scanner or SmartCard reader for security, trackpad or pointer nub for navigation, PC Card or Express
Card for expansion, and Verizon EV-DO or Cingular HSDPA for 3G. Wow -- this one's already looking like a contender for
one of the coveted 2006 Engadget Awards (only to get voted down in favor of a MacBook, we'd imagine).
posted March 30th 2006 5:00AM
Looks yummy, but too expensive (and pointless) for a student like me... :(
Now thats what I call a laptop :)
Only a matter of time before Apple fans claim this design is 'ugly' and how Dell sucks. Suck on it guys, this is a real laptop.
I dig it. For a business class laptop, it's right on the money.
"Suck on it guys, this is a real laptop."
(spit-take)
Dude, I'm as much a PC guy as anybody, but *nothing* Dell makes is "real" anything. It's all pretty much bottom of the barrel trash. Spec-wise, they can put together some nice machines at reasonable prices, but they do it by cutting all sorts of corners in design and construction.
My wife's Dell Inspiron, for example, literally cracked once when she opened it. It would have cost us $249 to fix it out of warranty if I hadn't bought it with my credit card. Beyond that, though, just generally speaking it has an unrefined feel to it - the keyboard is total mush, the latches are plastic, the hard drive audibly clicks, the screen has horrible viewing angles, and even the LED's on it look totally old-school. I wouldn't say HP makes "real" laptops either but my HP (which I've just replaced because it also broke) looks and feels like a design that's about ten years ahead of anything Dell has put out.
ThinkPads have been accused of being unrefined also, but they're unrefined in ways that are almost endearing (not in stuff that matters, like the keyboard or screen quality), and they make up for it with heavy-duty construction. This is why they're also more expensive.
I just bought an $800 Acer laptop myself. It's cheap junk just like Dell but spec-wise it's better than anything Dell has available at that price (100GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Turion 64 processor). If you're going to buy based on specs for the price rather than quality, there are still better options than Dell out there.
Under Dell large business there are 3 laptop lines. Precision, Latitude, Inspiron (including XPS) I configures one of each to the max to see who was who. And the Latitude line is the only one sporting DDR2-533Mhz, wheres the Precision ships with DDR2-667Mhz.
And the Latitude ony have the intel video, and the other two come in nVidia Quadro, and ATI radion flavors.
And finially the latitude screen is 15.4" and the other 2 are 17"
Integrated Intel GMA 950 yuck!
#5 needs a refresher on what this means to Corp America. I've had an old laptop for three years now, and it wasn't new when I got it. I'm due for a refresh, which means if my company adopts a D620/D820 Latitude, I can finally get WiFi without an addon card, a dual-core CPU, and RAM to make it go go go. In short, a laptop I can use to develop apps in this millenium.
So this is big news for Corp America, because mgmt is not gonna pony up for Alienware machines for us.
-C
@ #7: "Integrated Intel GMA 950 yuck!"
Thats why when you order it, you make sure you get it with Nvidia Quadro NVS120M...
http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadronvs_notebook.html
Engadget has put up more postings and given more coverage of Dell laptops in one week (more than other laptops get in a month) that I am starting to think Engadget have recieved a wad of cash for their efforts.
Jeff comment #5,
Are you seriously comparing the $499 Inspiron special that your cheap ass bought for your wife to a top-of-the-line Latitude?
Your comment basically equals... "I bought my wife a base version Chevy Cavalier a couple of years ago and it's a total piece of crap. Therefore this new Chevy Corvette will be a total piece of crap too."
Simply brilliant
Anyone who doesn't understand that there's a big difference between Dell's consumer laptops and their corporate ones should cease embarrassing themselves (cough, Jeff #5, cough). You can also avoid Intel GMA hell by specifying a Quadro. The D*20s also do have DDR2-667 there #6. Finally the Canadian small and large business sides of Dell already have the D620 and D820 for 15% off though that offer ends today.
no idiot would give this dell a 2006 engadget award over the thinkpad t60 or the macbook pro. even pc magazine agrees. it's obvious that engadget is getting quite the wad of cash from this.
"I bought my wife a base version Chevy Cavalier a couple of years ago and it's a total piece of crap. Therefore this new Chevy Corvette will be a total piece of crap too."
Actually, HandleIT, there's more truth to that notion than you realize...
Though I'm an Apple fan (I don't own one yet buy my lappy is 6 years old and right when it dies I'm getting a not-Pro MacBook), I really do feel a little jealous when I see things like this. It is true that Apple's computers are designed better than any others (coughmybrothersinspironshingebrokecough), but of course when I'll be getting my MacBook I'll be paying the same amount of money as the D820 costs, which has the same specs as the MacBook Pro! I guess you have to pay for perfection.
Lets all just hope that the MacBook will still have a Core Duo!
If anyone has any question regarding the Latitude serires, then watch this video:
http://dell.com/html/us/products/latitude/test.html
So get real Jeff, Inspiron != Latitude.
And like many others have stated, the D820 has 3 different video cards to choose from: 224MB integrated, 258MB NVIDIA Quadro, and 512MB NVIDIA Quadro.
But anyways, I am very excited for this notebook. With a 9-cell battery, you can achieve around 7 hours of battery life and it seems like Dell has produced a solid laptop while keeping it visually appealing (Not as attractive as MacBook though).
Very excited.