Dell Latitude 6430u - finally a manufacturer that gets the business ultrabook!

Any owners of the 6430u yet? I'm wondering what the real battery life is like and how much noise it produces.

 

I have one. Its really nice, just the option for a 1600x900 screen would have been nice.

 

1600x900 should be available in februari, that's what I'm waiting for.
How is the batterylife and the noise production on this notebook?

 

I'm really curious about the battry life to understand if I shoudl consider fighting for an XPS13.
Any picture of the notebook with the 6 cell battery in?

 

The 3-cell and 6-cell are the same size/shape. The difference is that the 3-cell is much lighter and it feels a little bit "hollow"...Its also worthless, punching in about 1.5-2 hours of real-world usage (that may not be worthless in your book, but I'm a Mac guy and I'm used to MBPs and MBAs going at least 5-6 hours/day between charges.

The 6 cell battery, on the other hand, is EXCELLENT! It barely adds weight to the overall machine, but gives me REAL WORLD use of 5-6 hours before starting the low warnings, and thats with Lync calls, surfing, and Outlook CONSTANT use and all while connected through the WWAN card - I'm sure that WiFi would be even more efficient. This thing was the "take one thing" device I was looking for. I still love my Macs, but their greatest shortcoming is the lack of WWAN options.

I've been using this 6430u for a few days, and I have the following general observations about the notebook and Windows 8, which I took the plunge on as part of the purchase:

- Windows 8 feels a lot like Mac OS X 10.0/10.1 - Lots of new concepts, not necessarily all operational - It feels like we're living in two worlds. Also, navigation and operation on a non-tablet is foreign... It's almost designed for touch-only. Too many gestures required instead of visible UI components to perform functions.

- This notebook has a great sturdy feel, without any unsightly "ruggedization" look. The hinges really stand out as seemingly long-lasting, and the rubbery-coated outer chassis seems great for carrying to meetings and classes.

- The touchpad (ALPS) stinks - Good gesture support, but horrible drivers and inconsistent performance when scrolling and is absolutely horrible about tap-to-click sensitivity when you don't need/want it.

- The customization options are a little wonky. For the $$, these laptops should come standard with at least Bluetooth and possibly a basic WWAN option. The strange thing is that it seems that Bluetooth/WWAN are one OR the other, as the DW380 sits in the same slot as the 5560 HSPA or 580x LTE cards. I have the i7 model with a stock 4GB RAM, but it made sense to upgrade to 16GB aftermarket. I wanted WWAN, but it wasn't ordered with the option by the company. Whats strange is that Dell only sells the AT&T HSPA card (5560) as an after-purchase upgrade. The LTE cards must be supply-constrained for new orders only. I was also able to get around the WWAN/Bluetooth co-existence by ordering a non-Dell Intel 6235 WLAN card that will include BT functionality.

Stay tuned for more feedback as I continue to venture into the cross-platform world. These machines are pretty nice, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt so far. I will likely get more objective as time goes by.

 

Thanks for the information.
1.5-2h of realworld usage is worthless for anyone using the notebook while traveling a longer distance than the one from the office to the meeting room

Did you had the opportunity to put the notebook on a scale to check the real weight? With the old Latitude models Dell was quite creative in the declared one.

 

Any experience on the 1600x900 LCD option which is now available?

Also, any thoughts on why the Verizon 3G and LTE options do not seem to be available?

Thanks!

 

Wha! I just checked yesterday and it wasn't available.

I'll look again. As far as integrated cell radios, maybe they're just not ready yet? Remember that Dell likely has to submit the systems to the carriers for carrier testing. This can take a while (look at BlackBerry 10's delayed release here....) unfortunately.

EDIT: I see no entries for the high resolution screen option...all remain 1366 x 768.

 

It's been there for about 10 days. All of the 'customize' links from Latitude 6430u Ultrabook! sow it for me.

 

Ahh, oddly enough if you enter the site a different way, you don't see this option. Odd.