Dell Latitude D830 gets examined
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jul 30th 2007 3:29PM
posted Jul 30th 2007 3:29PM
Dell didn't stray very far from its nearly year-old D820 with its new D830 model, but those still on the fence about a purchase may want to head over to NotebookReview, which now has a fairly thorough examination of the laptop from someone that took the plunge and bought one. While it certainly won't stand out as much as some recent Dell laptops, NotebookReview's "Commander Wolf" nonetheless found the unit to be "visually appealing," with a solid construction and good performance, helped in no small part by its use of discrete graphics. On the downside, he unsurprisingly found that the D830 was "not a thin-and-light" and he was somewhat disappointed by an "unusually large" amount of light leakage coming from the bottom of the screen. The good Commander also thankfully took the time time to put the system through some benchmark tests, which you can check out by hitting up the link below.
Gets examined? Heh.
No visit from the headline fairy last night?
Yeah, we could do with some nice attention grabbing headlines, like
"Dell Latitude D830 EXPLODES...."
".....with great build quality."
I was just about to review it, my mom just got one (I'm 18, its still ok to live with my mom). It ran Super Pi to 2m digits in 1m 07s. I'm impressed though it is damn big.
I've had m hands on one of these for a few weeks. It is a nice unit but it is bug and heavy. Screen is nice.
My office issued me one of these a couple of weeks ago--with XP installed. I have no complaints and can run a dual screen setup with no problems. A sure buy for business users on the corporate card.
The sub-par screens have been a Dell issue for a while. Compared to almost every other laptop I've seen (even those from the Inspiron line) they are using really bad screens in the Latitude line. It goes from a shimmer-effect (almost like a silver tint to the screen), to the images on the screen being grainy, almost as if you are looking through sand. There are plenty of people complaining about viewing angles, but that doesn't bother me on mine. The light leakage is terrible compared to their competitors in the industry. I'm not sure what Dell was thinking in the Dx20 (D420, D620, and D820) line, but they are super laptops that deserve better screen treatment. I was hoping that Dell would come to their collective senses in the new Dx30 line, but it looks like that dream has gone unfulfilled.
I know from what I read on Notebookreview that Dell uses different suppliers for their screens as well..., I read all these comments on light leakage but that isn't the case with my screen (WUXGA). Very sharp, very readable for sucht a high res screen. Brighness could have been higher..., but certainly no light leakage.
I got my D830 for about two weeks now and I'm quite pleased with it; also with the fact that I didn't pay the consumer price :-D