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Is this 2011 Dell Latitude E6420 i7 8GB 320GB Laptop worth $200?

Discussion in 'Dell Latitude, Vostro, and Precision' started by jack53, Aug 20, 2018.

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  1. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    Now you're in the ballpark.
     
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  2. jack53

    jack53 Dell XPS 9360 i7 Lover!

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    I'm tempted on this one too:
    DELL XPS L421X i7-3537UM 2.0GHz 8GB 256SSD 14" 1600*900 NVIDIA 630M WIN 10 PRO
    $275. Great specs with discrete GPU. Main negative, it's five years old but seems to be lightly used and it is only 30 miles from me, whereas the one above is 3K miles away.
    https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/servicetag/dcx3ty1/configuration
    The Latitude E6540 which is only two years old and also in great shape. He wants $350 counting shipping, I was thinking of offering $300 w/free shipping?
    Thoughts?
     
  3. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    It's hard to say without some hints at your use case. It's a decent but old CPU, a low end GPU, and probably falls into the category of being prone to failure due to its overall age. You should think about things like 5 year old plastics, rubber, and thermal cycles. It's one thing to hold a machine for a long time, it's another entirely to buy an old machine without really knowing how it has been treated or its history.
     
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  4. mr_handy

    mr_handy Notebook Evangelist

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    Which processor? The full power quad core ones are still powerful machines by most standards; I can't remember if they produced some dual-core versions, but the full power Haswell dual cores should be fine for many uses for a bit longer. The only real downside to the E6540 is that it's a big tank of a machine, and that's a very durable chassis - I know people with machines of the E6x20 generation that are still in good shape after 7 1/2 years. If you don't mind the weight, and the configuration is good, I'd think about it seriously - but it's going to be a 7lb machine, heavier than all but a few high end workstation and gaming machines.

    I wouldn't touch the U-series Ivy Bridge (iX-3xxx series) processors anymore. These days, even the regular 3xxxM-speed-grade dual cores and the Haswell U series processors are pretty marginal. The quad core i7 QM like the i7-3720QM should be fine for a bit longer.
     
  5. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    I think it's a matter of adequacy for the intended usage which matters. Office software plus web browsing doesn't demand a lot of a CPU. I think RAM is becoming a more important factor particularly as multi-tabbed web-browsing can use a lot of RAM (or maybe that's my specific usage pattern) while 256GB SSDs are getting down towards HDD prices and help the system become more responsive. While I've got a Precision 5510 as my main machine I've also got a Core M powered Latitude 7370 for when I want to travel light and that CPU, after a short burst of speed, must be running in Ivy Bridge U series territory but seems fast enough.

    John
     
  6. Mastermind5200

    Mastermind5200 Notebook Virtuoso

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    M6x00 or M4x00 series are far better
     
  7. mr_handy

    mr_handy Notebook Evangelist

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    Memory is definitely a bigger deal and even for light usage 8GB is really obligatory these days -- both Chrome and Firefox (I haven't used edge at all) have process isolation between tabs and very aggressive RAM caching: I don't even have many tabs open, and Windows is reporting Firefox using 1.7GB in task manager... but any two socket Sandy/Ivy Bridge system will be able to go up to 16GB, and given that it's pretty easy to upgrade that and the disk (and very few systems that age will have been ordered with an SSD, and if upgraded by a prior owner, will probably have a much older SSD model, it's better to buy a cheap one with spinning rust and upgrade it yourself -- which is another reason to consider the Ivy Bridge generation a floor: the common Sandy Bridge chipsets didn't support SATA3, and while for most things people using a machine that old for, the throughput won't make a difference, it's getting to an age when every little bit helps.)

    Most general usage involves short burst of speed, and the iGPU will be a lot better... but yeah, the Core m3 7th gen processors benchmark out at very roughly the same as the Ivy Bridge U, and I've not been happy with the ones I've tried.

    Depends on how much you need the bigger GPU, in particular given the older generation. The chassis design is a little nicer, but not by a lot. Otherwise, you're trading a bigger (but still dated) GPU for more expensive and/or harder to find parts, which on an older machine can make a big difference in how long you can keep it running. Plus they're even heavier, and not quite so ridiculously easy to do service on. I had both a M4700 (from work) and a personal E6430 (which I gave to a family member), and if I could have either one back today I'd take the the E6430.
     
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