D830 Owner's Lounge

The D830 is my current laptop and I have had no problems with it at all.
It runs at 47c while idle and about 65c when in full use.
I don't even think that I've done a fresh install of the OS yet.

 

I grabbed a D830 in simply outstanding condition recently at a pawn shop a few blocks from my apartment. Saw it on the shelf, caught the price, did a double take knowing it should have been priced much higher and immediately set out running the Dell Diagnostic on it with a reboot. Stood there for nearly 45 minutes as it completed everything without a single error (had 2GB of RAM already in it so the RAM testing took most of that time; upgraded it to a full 4GB once I got it home).

1680x1050 LCD panel, and if I didn't know better I'd swear it was an IPS because it's so bright and the contrast is amazing - I don't think I've ever seen a WSXGA+ screen that looks this good, seriously. No damage at all to the laptop, the battery has 18% wear on it, and absolutely everything works without issues.

Shipping date was October of 2008 and it's got just about 195 days left on the CompleteCare warranty which was promptly transferred to my ownership as soon as I got it home. Has an 80GB 7200 rpm Hitachi in it which is more than enough for now; I intend to put a Corsair Force F60 SSD in it as the "boot" drive (270MB/s reads and 240MB/s writes); Fry's sells them as refurbs with 1 year warranties from Corsair for $90 so it'll be a few weeks.

Broadcom NIC and Broadcom Wi-Fi card in it which worked out nicely as I've got OSX and Windows 7 dual booting - Snow Leopard runs without issues and it's a 100% "vanilla" installation direct from my $29 Snow Leopard DVD. Pretty amazing - and it even gets slightly higher scores than the MacBook that most closely matches the hardware configuration, go figure.

Anyway, I was in the right place at exactly the right time and got lucky with this one, and I suspect it'll be my primary laptop for some time to come.

Oh, and the price? That's the best part... $149.99 + tax

And yes, I agree about the new generation of the Latitudes: I'm simply not interested in them. I would love to have that Sandy Bridge power in the last generation form factor, however, but that's not going to happen so I guess I'll be using the D830 for a while, maybe look into getting a Latitude E6500 or maybe a Precision M4400 at some point and stick with a proper 16:10 aspect LCD panel.

The new stuff is just not interesting at all...

 

Damn you; mine was 10X the price.. Make sure you hit eBay and get a $10 docking station and you'll be all set! Heck, make it two, one for home, one for the office .

 

wow bbzghost you summed up my thoughts exactly on the d830. i have the same glorious screen on mine, a precision m4300. also have osx. decked it out with blu-ray and a fingerprint reader. for no amt of money will apple sell a macbook with bluray,fingerprint and dock! i still use mine daily even though i have other top notebooks like the vaio z,hp hdx 18 and macbook air 13

 

Backlight on my WUXGA screen is starting to die. I think I have found a website that sells kits that allow one to replace the CCFL backlighting with LED backlighting.

Anyone else done a swap from a CCFL backlight to a LED backlight on the Latitude D830?

Comments?

 

I didn't know it was even possible. I was looking into the same for my D630, because I'd heard some (white?) D630 XFRs had flush (i.e. no borders) LED screens, but failed. :-( IIRC there was different display connector on XFR's motherboard. In addition XFR's mobo doesn't fit my (plain) D630 base (may be you need ATG base, not sure).

P.S. I have D830 too. If you ever succeed please post it here. Thanks in advance.

Good luck.

 

Okay, I was able to successfully retrofit the LCDparts.net LED backlight kit into my LT154 - L06 WUXGA panel on the Dell Latitude D830.

Big problem is that the point light sources are not properly difused for the first half inch. Either a proper difuser, or more distance in the backlight compartment, would idea.

I wouldn't recommend the kit, especially at the price I paid (almost $100 once shipped!). Power consumption of the LED set is 2.2W, and it is considerably brighter, but the installation complexity is simply far too much for most people.

Any questions, just ask me? But if you value your sanity...just go buy a new panel.

 

beware of the heat issues with the M4400. But otherwise its a good laptop. Served me well for over 2 years. That D830 was a fantastic deal! congrats. it sounds like you can make a few upgrades if you wish with the amount of money you saved (docking station, maybe WUXGA screen)

 

What is a good replacement batt? I would like a 9cell that uses great 2600mAh cells for a total of 7800mAh 11.1V.

Thx.

Sent from my GT-P6800 using Tapatalk 2

 

Pretty sure the Dell 9-Cells are already of that configuration... you don't need to get a generic for that.