Dell Latitude D430 Coming July 2nd

According to the Dell Taiwan site the Latitude D430 ultraportable notebook, the follow-on to the Latitude D420, will be available on July 2nd. The good news is that it will offer a Solid State hard drive (SSD). The bad news is no new Intel Santa Rosa platform, initially at least.

Following are the specs for the Latitude D430 according to what's available on the Dell Taiwan site:

• Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 (1.2GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB) or Intel Core Solo U1400 (1.2GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)


• 1GB DDR2 RAM 533MHz, up to 2GB total


• Intel GMA 950 graphics


• 12.1" WXGA display


• Solid State hard drive up to 32GB or 1.8" 4200 RPM hard drive


• 4, 6 or 9-cell battery


• Intel 4965 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless


• Slots: PCMCIA Type II


• Ports: Serial docking connector, 3 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, headphone/speaker out, modem, ethernet, AC power, integrated microphone, FireWire, SD card slot

The Latitude D430 as seen on the Dell Taiwan site

So basically the processor gets upgraded from the existing Dell D420 that has a Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo), but no move to the new Intel Santa Rosa platform. This is quite odd seeing that Lenovo quickly moved its X-series ultraportable to Santa Rosa last month with the release of the ThinkPad X61 and HP will soon be releasing a Santa Rosa ultraportable in the form of the HP Compaq 2710p. Obviously Dell has bumped into some design issues that doesn't allow them to move the D430 to Santa Rosa or they simply decided customers don't care about having the latest Intel processor and integrated graphics platform on their business ultraportable. Whatever the case, my guess is that this move might turn off some buyers, but I've been known to be wrong.

The SSD drive option is of course a bonus, having the SSD drive will give you better battery life and faster hard drive performance. Since a regular drive for the D430 will be a 1.8" variety that spins at a max of 4200RPM the SSD will be a big performance improvement over other options.

Also new will be the option of the Intel 4965 wireless card that provides 802.11n wireless. You'll also have the option of integrated WWAN like you do with the D420. Other than that, unless there's something else being upgraded we don't see in the specs, everything remains the same. This is good since the Latitude D420 is a very solid offering, but a little dissapointing not to see at least a little more of a specs bump.

 

Andrew, I wanted to point out that the reason the Thinkpad X60 for instance has been updated to SR and not the D430 is because the former uses LV chips and the latter uses ULV chips. ULV chips haven't reached Santa Rosa yet because it demands higher power consumption and that is a no no for ultraportable notebooks and ULV chips.

I don't even see the need for Core 2 Duo in ULV chips since they take a big more power than their Core Duo cousins and since when do you need or can even utilize 64bit in an ultraportable? Never.

In fact, the only upcoming ULV chips later this year are the Core 2 Solos, ULV notebooks always take significantly longer to get the newer tech than their bigger brothers unfortunately and its a big peeve of mine.

When the Napa platform was released in early 2006, for several months, ULV notebooks were still using the older Pentium M tech and it took several months for them to finally move into Napa.

I am surprised that Dell is still using PC card in this notebook instead of Expresscard, guess they won't die.

 

True, you make a good point, though the HP Compaq 2710p and Thinkpad X61 s are pretty darn close in terms of weight and dimensions to the D430 and that'll be using the non ULV processor, so I still think the D430 is going to be compared to laptops of the same size and dimension and people will ask why the D430 can't be using a LV processor -- the other guys seem to have figured out the cooling situation for that size chassis.

 

Yes, even the 11.1" Asus S6 series uses LV processors though they lack a bit in battery life, maybe because they used LV instead of ULV. But LV is quite nice as its still more mobile than the regular processors but Santa Rosa versions exist in LV form. Too bad the Asus hasn't put them yet in the S6 series.

I see very very few notebooks using LV processors, anyone know why?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong - but doesn't dell currently offer the flash hard drive option, albeit a very expensive one?

This rev. doesn't seem to bring anything new to the table. Nothing new designwise, either. *yawn*

 

The D430 has the Core 2 Duo U7600 which is not a Santa Rosa part.
There is simply no ultra low voltage chipset such as the GMS965 available at this moment, so it still uses the older 945GMS chipset. In a way the D430 is only now getting the Napa64 refresh that most notebooks got last fall.

It now has 1GB non-removable onboard, which is better than the 512MB of the D420, other than that there is little to be excited about.

 

Should heat be reduced some now with the ssd?

 

No, I'm pretty sure that the 2510p and 2710p were using ULV chips on the Santa Rosa platform....they were like 1.2GHz, much lower than the LV chips.

The S6 is a lot thicker than the other 11.1" notebooks, so its easier to cool it. The X61 must have an awesome cooling system, plus its got a pretty large surface area compared to the other ultraportables. It handles the regular voltage C2D chips pretty easily, much less the LV ones.

 

Link doesn't work anymore, perhaps it was a mistake.

 

Can anyone tell me whether the SSD in the D420/430 is user-swappable? I was thinking of purchasing the HDD option and then waiting for the SSD to drop in price before jumping in.

 

http://www.ejstrup.dk/dell/Latitude_D430_Spec_Sheet.pdf

 

any ideas on the price range for this notebook?