Dell D820 New Owner post here :)

I love mine - got it yesterday.

So, how do you like yours, good/bad, more/less than what you expected?

Any problems to date?

 

I got mine yesterday as well. Fast shipping. I couldn't believe that I ordered last Thursday (April 13) and received it yesterday (April 18). So far so good. I love the way Dell redesign the Latitude line. The chasis is sturdy. This baby does not generate a lot heat. Love it. One thing I don't like the screen. It's a nice screen, but I wish it has more brightness level. By the way, this laptop is not heavy. Considering Asus Z70V, this D820 is better. What can I say more? Love it.... it's so sweet.

 

agreed on the screen but i'm getting used to it ... getting some 'strange' errors when I install my Palm and Camera software etc .... making me nervous, I'll install some more stuff and see what happens

 

Got it yesterday too, everything seems great... Regarding the screen, why does Dell continue to configure Windows by default with large fonts? This really makes pics and fonts in the browser appear fuzzy at the native resolution. Granted, changing it back to normal makes everything smaller, but it's so much better... Anyone else notice this? It's not specific to this machine either, I've seen it for years from Dell on their native Windows XP installs.

 

Can anyone confirm whether there is an S video port or not? I read a review that said there wasn't, but it was listed as an included port on a Dell site, but then not listed under the specs. Also, is the DVD RW a dual layer? Can't get an answer on that either. I have one on order, but may not want to keep it if those answers aren't what I need. Thanks in advance.

 

No dual layer and no s-video port.

 

what screen resolution and font settings/etc are you running your D820 at?

i like some of the things the Inspiron has that the D820 doesn't offer... granted this is a business machine... but a comparible Inspiron e1505 (6400 in Canada) you can get the Brighter Screen... more ports etc... what keeps me from doing that is the quality is in the Latitude line for sure.... sure is a hell of a lot of e1505 owners though, its more of a dual purpose machine i guess - nothing wrong with that more features... same money... just the sacrifice in quality/support ...

 

So far so good. I have not gotten any problem yet. I have ordered 1GB memory from Newegg. Hopefully, this machine will be stable. Good luck with all yours!

 

1920x1200 normal (96dpi) font

 

Thanks for the info, Hurricane. Not what I wanted to hear!

 

For those lucky new D820 owners - how's the chassis heat and fan noise/activity during extended normal/light use (i.e. surfing, mail, Office etc)?

With new Core Duo Latitudes coming on the market, I'm thinking of returning to the Dell fold if the D820 is a cool/quiet runner when essentially "idling". I'd be considering a spec with 2Gb RAM (future proofing and some VMWare use), NVS 120 and probably a 5400 100 Gb HDD (unless those with 7200 RPM are not finding it too hot).

 

I received my D820 yesterday and spent the better part of the day copy data from my old laptop (T43p) and installing applications (Office, VFP9, Frontpage, Beyond Compare, etc.). So far, this thing is the best!

Pros...
1. Keyboard is top notch - quiet, firm, great tactile response, and no accidental snagging of the adjacent key when typing. Not sure what they did (keys closer together or not as much key travel), but it is excellent. I like it better than that on a Thinkpad.

2. Trackpoint is vastly improved (over the D810 and D610). Flattened the top, added some texture to it, and made it operate ever so smoothly. The buttons are also more ergonomic and don't have so much travel so they are much easier to press.

3. LCD is excellent. In spite of what others think, I feel the brightness is perfect for all lighting conditions. No, it's not glossy or truebright, but it is very evenly lit and has great clarity. I got the WXGA+ and still increased the dpi setting from the default 96. The default Dell setting of 120 was just too big, so I'm using 106 dpi and find it perfect for my eyes.

4. Build quality is phenominal. A lot of people talk about the build quality of Thinkpads... I was one of them, but this is BETTER... no exageration. I have access to a T60 and the outside casing is actually quite easy to compress in certain areas - the palm rests near the outside edges of the laptop and on the sides nearer to the LCD. The D820 has no bend, no creaks, and no give where it shouldn't have any. It feels like it's very, very thick carbon fiber.

5. Weight is much lighter. I was surprised to see that in spite of the 15.4 inch screen, the weight has been reduced making this much easier to carry around. I haven't weighed it, but the lightest weight 15.4 inch laptop that I've seen to date (not counting the Macbook Pro) is the Sony FE550. This is in the same neighborhood.

6. Formfactor. Thinner, more contoured, and more compact. Definitely a laptop I can take with me on the road.

7. De-****ped. Did anyone notice that their D820 is not loaded with ****ware like the Inspirons? I honestly didn't see anything that I wanted to uninstall.

8. Battery-life. Accidentally ordered the 6 cell battery and I'm going 3+ hours of battery life doing software development and websurfing with the LCD set to one less than the max brightness and the wireless/bluetooth turned on. Not bad.

9. Sound. Love the placement of the speakers (one on each side of the keyboard) and the sound is very good.

10. Not hot running. This is really a pet peeve of mine. How can you use a laptop for business if it gets so hot you don't enjoy using it. Yes, the left palm rest is warm, but I can't tell if it's because my left hand never seems to leave the palmrest or if there is some heat being generated below it. The bottom does get a little warm in the back, but nothing uncomfortable. I think they did a nice job of keep the air flowing and cooling things off.

Cons...
1. The horizontal viewing angles is very, very good, but the vertical is not very good at all. Definitely have to adjust the LCD for viewing angle.

2. Why are my tasktray icons so tiny and there are two rows of them in the tasktray - one right on top of the other row? Anyone know how to change this?

3. They installed the Google **** - Google desktop, Google toolbar in IE and god knows what other google stuff. I hate the toolbar because it blocks popus and you have to keep telling it that it's okay to allow the popups, which are not really popups but new IE windows in another Window.

First impression is very, very positive! Dell definitely did this one right.

 

BrianO
Today was the first full day of use with the D820 hooked up to my port replicator at the office. Yes, when the radio was off and it was dead quiet in the office, I could hear the fan cycle on and off, but you could never hear it unless you were in a very quiet environement.

I have the 7200 rpm hard drive and it is pleasantly quiet and fast and not what I would consider hot running. I have a Sony FE with a 160 gig 4200 rpm drive that runs much hotter than the D820. I am quite pleased with the heat level.

I'm anxious to see if the D620 runs any hotter due to the smaller form factor.

 

Hi jjfcpa, i'm liking my D820 too - received it yesterday. What's the specs of yours? HD, RAM etc etc, you can see my spec's in my other thread.

I agree with your summary for sure - well said.

 

jjfcpa, that's encouraging news...

I briefly tried a Toshiba Core Duo (P100, that I think may have been a dud but anyway...) which, when idling, had the teeth grinding habit of repeatedly fan blowing loudly at high speed for 1-2 secs about every 30 secs... drove me crazy and at times the keyboard was still uncomfortably warm to touch! Gave up on that one after messing with power management. rebuilds and back to the dealer for testing...

Is it more a case of the fan just whirring away quietly in the background at an even pace to keep things cool for the 820?

 

hurricane or other D820 owners: Are you sure the DVDRW is not DL? I have a M65 (basically same as D820) and although my specs don't mention anywhere about DL support (that i can find), Roxio says that my drive supports DVD+R DL. My DVD model is an NEC 6650A. I stuck in a DL disc and although I have not burned it yet, Roxio it sees a 8Gig disc. Sweet bonus if the drive actually is a DL.

 

Hmm, I guess I spoke too soon. I didn't see DL specified anywhere either, but now that you mention it when I fire up Roxio, it does say that the drive supports DVD+R DL. I've never burned a DL disc, but it sure does sound like it is a DL drive. Cool.

I have never heard my fan come on. The unit has been very quiet. There is a BIOS setting for hard drive volume as well - you can ratchet down the noise (and speed) or ratchet it up. I put it to loudest (and fastest) and the hard drive is the only thing that I can hear, but it's not annoying. I might change it back to see if I can tell a difference. I like all the new options in the BIOS now.

 

d820 won't burn a DL dvd

 

Success! I burned a DVD+R DL on my M65.

 

Hey BrianO,

What model of port replicater do you use?


~Nitehood

 

I think that question is actually aimed at jjfcpa?

 

jjfcpa - thanks for the nice little summary, it was very encouraging.

Could anybody review one of these things for nbr?

Also, does anybody have anything to say about the matte LCD? I've been thinking about getting a D820 but I like glossy LCDs. I don't want to make a bad choice and not get an excellent computer. Please advise.

 

Sounds like most people are happy with the D820 - which is good since I'm about to order one (or possibly the M65 - this is the only option I have been given by my IT department). Basically they seem to be the same except for the video card (Quadro NVS 120M (256MB + 256MB from system) or NVIDIA Quadro FX 350M (256MB)).

I know neither card is a gaming card (I've seen several fairly harsh posts in other threads reminding me of this) - despite this, I'd be interested to know which would handle games better - either would suffice for my business needs.

 

etccu1987,
I'll write up a full review once mine comes in. Someone posted in another thread here that the systems get built overseas, then you have to wait 3 days for the box to get sent overseas from Tennesee before they package it. I thought it was funny and they were joking, but it does look to be true. As of Friday morning my system was fully built and tested, just waiting to be boxed and still is. Even though the system is built and tested already, they still show my expected ship date to be May 1 (another full week just waiting on the box?) and arrival on May 4-9. Not that I'm in any hurry, but you know how it is waiting to get your hands on something new you just bought. The waiting defineatly isn't the fun part, hopefully when they come back to work Monday morning they'll have my new D820 boxed up and shipped a week ahead of the original quoted schedule.

rdt6737,
I realize there is a market for it out there amongst some people, but, I'm not sure why anyone would ever want to spend the money for a laptop though with the intent of it just being a serious gaming system. Even if you put the best parts money could buy into a laptop to make it a dedicated gaming system, you could still get even better parts for even less money, as well as an insanely faster system in a desktop PC. I'm ready to upgrade my own Desktops now that I have the new laptop taken care of. I was looking at the Dell XPS 600 and the OptiPlex GX620's and 24" Widscreen Monitors. It looks like I'll just be building my own though from parts bought at newegg.com since I can build my own system with better parts, the parts I want and at the same cost as what I could get a limited part option system from Dell for. I will be buying my new 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor from Dell though, on paper for both quality in measuring the specs and equal price from other sources, the Dell 24" seems to be a no brainer.

The only thing I wish the D820 had (and I haven't found any laptops out there that have it, but it would be a cool feature), would be support for RAID 0 with dual SATA 3.0Gb/s 7200 or 10K RPM Hard Drives in a laptop. Who cares what it would do to your battery life, you'd get your work done so much faster you wouldn't need the laptop on for as long. I'm never far from somewhere or something to plug my laptop into for power anyhow.

 

Thanks so much, that'd be awesome. If you could do me (and probably some other people) a huge favor and include a decent amount about the matte LCD and your thought of the vid card (3DMark seems reasonable). Also, if you could include some super pi tests, that would be great. At any rate, having a review on this thing should be helpful to me and the many others who are looking to buy a good, solidly built computer.

 

esoterica

Thanks for the posts here and the short story you wrote:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=50758&page=2
Very entertaining!

Regarding your response to my post:
I agree there are cheaper alternatives with better gaming potential, but unless I want to buy it myself, the D820 and M65 are my only options... I just like to know which would be better on the odd occasion that I get chance to play...

Regarding RAID options:

In the UK at least, you would have a few options:
http://www.alienware.co.uk/product_pages/notebook_all_default.aspx
Aurora m7700
http://www.rockdirect.com/consumer_notebooks.htm
Xtreme 64 & Xtreme CT
All three laptop are configurable for RAID 0 or RAID 1

Let us know how the D820 does with games if you get the chance.

 

SuperPI for me (2.0GHz) is 1:14. I think the screen is great coming from a D600 - the widescreen seems luxoriously large in comparison. I am used to a matte screen, so I don't notice anything bad about it, but I have seen a glossy screen on a friend's Sony and would prefer that if it was available. Unfortunately I don't have time for a full review, but I have posted some pics on another thread. Let me know if you need more info - if someone can point me to a free 3dmark benchmark then I can run that - I have the 512MB (shared) nVidia card.

 

Try
http://www.futuremark.com/download/?3dmark05.shtml

 

You can use the LCD protection film.

you can get a glossy screen&Lcd protection at the same time.

<img src = "http://www.e-elecom.co.kr/product_image/2184022_1.jpg">

But you'd be better to ask experts to put this thing on your screen

cuz it's extreamly hard work -_-;;;;

 

It's not so much the fact that the screen isn't reflective (which may actually be a good thing), but the difference in contrast between the two.

 

the role of the film is not just make your screen reflective.

My screen's became a little bit brighter and clearer after using

the film. The glossy screen has a special coating in its screen so

i think it's kind of a same thing.

the only difference is inside coating/outside coating.

I'm not sure but i'm telling you this based on my experience.

In addition, D820 is a business laptop so the users don't want to have a

glossy screen cuz it's not great for work. (just like Thinkpad doesn't have

glossy screens except the tablet model)

 

How much do those films cost? If they're cheap I might try one just to see.

 

It's around $10~20(US) in Corea&Japan. I'm not sure about US.

 

I get the feeling they won't be too much more here. Might even be less than in Japan. Thanks for the idea, I'll look into it.

EDIT: I found some for $15

 

I just want you to know that there's lots of types of Lcd films.

some films make your glossy screen not glossy(for decreasing reflected light)

so you have to be careful. plus, don't get a cheap films from china

cuz you get what you pay for.

 

Hello everybody!

I am close to buying a D820 for work. Just one thing i would like to know: is the display bright enough to work outside? I love sitting outside in the summer and to work there for a while...
What do you think: is this possible with the D820 display?

Thanks!
Sebastian

BTW: for everybody still looking for technical details of the d820 - i found a review (well, its in norwegian, but the tech-details and benchmark results are readable): http://www.hardware.no/tester/baerbar_pc/dell_latitude_d820/23979
They also measured things like temperature and game performance and give a _very_ detailed tech spech list here: http://www.hardware.no/tester/laptop/dell/d820/report.htm

 

Ha!

Your all killing me here with your humor, you aren't really expecting me to write up some review based on what some software program thought of it were you?

That info is already out there.

I was thinking more along the lines of how well I thought the D820 design went with my bathroom fixtures while sitting on the pooper using it, do I suffer any data loss, screen flickers or WiFi interferance when the toilet flushes.

All I've ever used are the Matte type screens just because there's nothing I hate more than screen glare so I can also tell you right off where I'll be biased in that aspect.

 

finally....someone who knows how to review a computer!

 

rdt6737,
Dude, that alienware Aurora m7700 is just insane!

I looked into the alienware systems here in the US and didn't see options like that in any of their systems a few weeks ago. I thought they were a little too proud of their products reflected in their also extreme prices in everything I looked at.

That's starnge that alienware is actually owned by Dell and are allowed to still put out a gamers laptop that just blows the Dell flagship gamer XPS systems off the charts on paper.

All that punch in a laptop though scares me. I use AMD Processors in all my Desk Top systems I custom build, one thing I've noticed is they pump the heat out. In a desk top system it's no big deal, you can design it easily enough to dissapate all that heat and run at maximum performance. In a laptop though I'd be concerned because your really limited on how much heat from the system you can remove. With the heat AMD processors are notorious for, add in there the heat of a high end GPU and then the heat of 2 hard drives and it seems like you'd have the equivalant to a blow torch worth of heat you had to dissapate from a very limited and confining amount of space.

It's interesting that alienware is owned by Dell, yet even Dells own flagship systems don't offer AMD porcessors or RAID configurations. If they've somehow figured out a way to dissapate all the heat that thing must be generating then that system would rock. All the heat scares me though, sounds like your just asking for system lock ups even under normal use.

AMD has been wrongfully ear marked as a cheaper alternative to Pentiums which is anything but true other than being cheaper for the same (providing your system is well enough designed to dissapate the extra heat).

I can't believe Dell isn't offering RAID in their mid to high end machines seeing as how their own company is selling the technolagy and options under a different name.

 

I noticed that the d/port port replicator has S-video......Does this mean that it can be used when the D820 is plugged into it?

 

Yep, I don't think it would work very well if the Latitude wasn't plugged into it...

 

Let me clarify that ;-)

the D820 doesn't have an S-Video jack in the machine. Does this mean that you can use the svideo jack in the D/Port, eventhough the D820 doesn't have it? Port replicator means just that to me. It doesn't have it, so what are you replicating.....

 

I suppose the name is misleading then, since it is providing new functionality in this instance.

 

hurricane and those who have similar issues:

I was also suffering from this (note that this problem happens only for the MS Internet Explorer as far as I know; there was no such a problem with any other application like FireFox), but yesterday found a solution at Dell support site. Here it is:

Dell Knowledge Base Article 287967 - Pictures in Internet Explorer may appear fuzzy or distorted on a Dell™ portable computer.

Rather than changing the whole things back to normal (i.e., 120 DPI -> 96DPI), which greatly reduces the size of fonts in every application, you can do that only for the Internet Explorer using a small utility provided in the above article ( R98539.exe).

Looks like Dell really cares for issues like this more than expected.

 

Wow, great find, thanks!

 

I'm looking to buy a D820. Just have a question that neither Nvidia website or Dell's reps can answer.

Does the Nvidia Quadro NVS 120M/110M allow for multi-displays?
I'm looking to use the D820 screen AND an external monitor at the same time.

Thanks!

 

Yes, absolutely - it's called clone mode.

 

Thanks Huricane.

I thought Clone Mode would only duplicate the laptop screen on an external monitor.
Are you positive you can have different windows opened on each screen -ie. Word on one and excel on the other?

 

Sure, you can either clone or you can extend your desktop onto an external display.

 

Much appreciated Hurricane. Thanks. I just placed my order.
Will sit and wait impatiently now....