My company laptop is currently Dell Latitude D620 which is already quite old and my IT support folks are saying there is a possibility that the company is going to get the new Latitude E series to replace the old laptops. The mode they are referring to is the Dell Latitude E6500 and they already have one unit sitting on their desk. When I first looked at it, it is not much different from the D830 which some of my UK colleagues are using. The design is no doubt better at first glance but it is about the same size with the bulky Latitude D830. I seriously have my doubts whether I want to change my smaller D620 with this monster.

However, after testing it for a while, I realized that this is way better than D830 and my D620. First of all, the LCD display is made of high quality material and it is not glossy at all. The large screen of 15.4 inches is definitely better than my current D620 wide screen as it supports up to 1920 x 1200 resolution. To be honest, programmers like me do prefer our screen to have bigger resolution since it will be easier for us to navigate around that long list of files and folders. My current D620 sometimes requires me to scroll up and down, left and right in order to find the files or folders I need. Besides that, another significant difference I can see right away is the back-lit keyboard. My D620 does not have such keyboard and it is nearly impossible to work in dark areas. With back-lit keyboard, it is still okay to work if there’s a blackout. Also, the light sensor equipped with the laptop does help out a lot in preserving the laptop’s battery power. I no longer need to trouble myself with the constant adjustment of the brightness, which I am doing currently with my D620. The laptop also comes with a new Dell laptop battery which has 9 cells. It also allows you to use an extra backup battery to dock with the laptop, allowing you to work without any power supply for longer hours. I’ve tried to use the laptop without any power supply (basically leaving it there while I continued with my pending tasks) and it took slightly less than 4 hours before the laptop was shut down due to lack of battery power. This is quite a long time but with Dell laptop batteries, one will never know what might happen next. My current D620’s battery can only last for 10 minutes now, after using it for 2 years. It happened to all my colleagues who are using Dell laptops too and this proves that Dell batteries are problematic. Let’s just hope the new 9-cell battery will not have such problem.

The laptop also comes with a much faster processor Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz. It is one of the latest Intel chipset and is definitely faster than my current D620. Other than that, the laptop also comes with 2 GB of RAM. It is not enough since my current laptop has 4 GB of RAM. The good thing about this is that the laptop allows me to upgrade the memory up to 5 GB, as compared to the maximum of 4 GB most laptops have. The standard hard drive is 250 GB which is quite sufficient for a corporate laptop since most of us already have an external hard disk. One thing I want to note here is that, although the hard drive is a huge 250 GB hard drive, Dell still manages to keep the weight of the laptop under 2.4 kg which is quite an amazing feat. As for USB ports, there are 4 of them, much better than the XPS M1530 which I’ve tried before. There is also an eSATA port which allows you to connect a standard hard drive directly.

In terms of build quality, the laptop’s body is quite sturdy and the surface is not that prone to scratches like some of the other Dell laptops. However, being a long time Dell laptop users, I know that the first year will always be okay for the laptops. Problems will start occurring after 1 year, just like what happened to my D620. Another thing to note here is that the ventilation system’s output is at the side, instead of at the rear, which is quite a poor design. Most of the laptops with such design have been condemned before this and I could not understand why Dell still sticks to this design. It would have been much better if they stick to the rear design they used for most Latitude laptops. It just does not feel as comfortable when typing since the side of the laptop is quite hot.

By the way, if you are not a Microsoft Vista fan (I’m not) then fear not. Dell allows you to downgrade to Windows XP Professional and that are the reason why most corporate users go for it since a lot of corporations are not willing to port over to Windows Vista just yet. It is a good move by Dell to be honest and even for home user; I would prefer XP Professional than Vista Ultimate any day.

Overall, this laptop is a very worthy replacement for the D830 since it looks better, more expandable, cheaper and lighter. It does have its weaknesses such as the wrong placement of the air ventilation, the unavailability of a 17 inch model, mediocre sound system and graphic engine. If you are looking for a stable corporate laptop with plenty of expandability, this is the one for you. However, if you are looking for a gaming or multimedia laptop, then you should not go for this one since the graphic card cannot even support newer games such as Red Alert 3 and the new Prince of Persia.

Rating: 9