Dell Latitude D830 User Review

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by Michael Arcilla

Overview and Introduction

This is a review of the Santa Rosa refresh Dell Latitude D830. First, let’s start with a little background of Dell’s Latitude series.

The Latitude series of laptops is part of Dell’s business line. As business machines, they are more focused on reliability, durability and subtlety (whereas the more consumer-oriented Inspirons tout more powerful media-centric features such as a high-end discrete graphics solution, dedicated media keys, more attractive price points, etc.).

Other series in this lineup include the Precision series (high-powered mobile workstations aimed mostly at high-end graphics professionals, particularly those with the need for 3D rendering) and the newly-released economy-class Vostro series, introduced to replace the now long-in-the-tooth business Inspirons. The Latitude sits squarely in the middle of both lines, providing a balance between high performance and price.

The Latitude comes in a wide variety of flavours, but for most people the choice really lies between the 14.1” 630, and the 830 which is the larger, 15.4” model. This model comes in as a desktop replacement, as its weight isn’t suited to lugging all around town.

The configuration I ended up getting was:

• 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500, 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
• 2GB DDR2-667 SDRAM
• 120GB 5400rpm SATA HDD
• 8X DVD±RW Dual Layer drive
• 15.4” WUXGA screen
• 256MB NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M
• Touchpad with integrated UPEK Fingerprint Reader
• Intel 4965 WLAN (802.11a/g/n)
• 9-cell battery
• Dell Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)
• Windows Vista Ultimate with media
• 4-Year Next-Business-Day Parts and Labor On-Site Response Gold Warranty
• 4-Year Accidental Damage Warranty

I also opted for a few accessories:

• Logitech VX Revolution Cordless Mouse
• Belkin Travel Surge Protector
• Extra 90W AC Adapter
• Western Digital Passport 120GB Portable Hard Drive
• Interlink Electronics Bluetooth Remote Control

My total cost came to around $2,700, inclusive of shipping and taxes. This was a little more than I was prepared to spend, but I’ll go into more detail later on.

Reasons for Buying:

The reason I needed NEEDED to buy a new laptop was because my last Windows PC, the Compaq Presario X1000, was in serious need for repair. The hinges and power button action were cracked badly, the hard drive was heating up obscenely and the battery held a charge just longer than it took to hard boil an egg. I was, however, impressed with the high quality of the screen, in particular the high WSXGA+ resolution and the computer’s overall performance. I still had the MacBook Pro, but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice both performance and precious hard drive space on running two operating systems and maintaining project and work files for both OS’ on that same tiny hard drive. I work in advertising and events, and my primary use for the system would be Office 2007 Professional, especially Excel (for my cost estimates and budget controls), Project (for project management, especially critical when running multiple promotions and events at the same time) and PowerPoint (for presentations to clients). As I tend to take on other roles when needed, my computer had to be capable of handling Adobe CS3 (for rendering stage designs, advertising collaterals and other items), Premiere (for Audio-Visual Presentations)

I knew then that I would settle for no less than a 15.4” widescreen laptop with at least WSXGA+ or better resolution – preferring to move up to WUXGA. The system also had to be powerful enough to handle the load of specific software I needed to do my job without buckling or slowing down. Finally, my experience with the X1000’s flimsy plastic parts led me to look for a solid and durable, if not rugged build.

I was initially looking at three manufacturers:

• Dell (on the primary recommendation of my wife, whose experience with them was top-notch),
• Lenovo (First-hand experience with IBM Thinkpads was overall a good experience, not to mention the generally high reputation they enjoy with many people), and
• HP (due to the overall aesthetic appeal and excellent after-sales service here in the Philippines.

On top of these three, I was also reviewing Asus’ latest laptops - in particular the G1. I wasn’t too sold on the look and feel of the current Toshibas, and I certainly didn’t like the “cheap” feeling I got with Acers.

The refresh came just in time for my purchase, actually. I was originally planning to get the Inspiron E1505 based on a recommendation from a friend, who has been a Dell user for a few years. Being from The Philippines (where Dell is neither a prevalent brand nor one with real significant retail market share), it was difficult for me to find and units to personally inspect. Ordinarily I would not have qualms with ordering a notebook I had never seen before, but I was getting worried with reviews of the E1505 being a bit on the chunky side. Thankfully, I found a reseller, CoolToyz, about an hour and a half from my house that would CTO various laptops and resell them in-store. When I found their website, I decided to drop by the store to check out the wide variety of laptops they had on sale. I was honestly not that impressed with the look and feel of the E1505, as it was bulky, felt a bit flimsy (especially the lid) and those white bumpers really rubbed me the wrong way. I had not considered the Latitude until I saw the D820 there, and I definitely liked its look and feel a lot more than the Inspiron, in spite of its subdued, very business-y appearance. Plus it felt like a tank (at least, compared to the 1505). With that experience, I decided the Dell laptop for me would be the Latitude series, in 15.4”.

Another unit they had in the store was the Lenovo Thinkpad Z61t. Now I loved the look and feel of this machine – almost enough to make me switch to the smaller screen size - but its relatively low resolution, lack of discrete graphics and ridiculously tiny touchpad turned me off. It was only when I read of the m and p variations did I start to take this series seriously.

Finally, there were the HP Pavillions in 15.4” and 17” models. Unfortunately, while I like the new look and styles of HP’s entire line of notebooks, their popularity made me reconsider. What good is a stylish notebook (assuming you buy it for that) if everyone and their grade school math teacher’s dog’s got it? Plus the lack of anything higher than WXGA+ on the majority of their notebooks made me scratch them off my list completely.

So that left me with only the Latitude and the Z61 Thinkpads to choose from.

Where and How Purchased:

I spoke to the official distributor and retailer of Lenovo Thinkpads in the country and discovered that, much to my dismay, my beloved Z61 series (all of them, the t, p and m) had been discontinued. While I was saddened at losing the prospect of owning my first ever Thinkpad (it was an élite class I had wanted to join, hahaha) I was also heartened at having my choices simplified for me. I had then initially thought of purchasing the D820 at the store. But bang for my buck didn’t add up, when a much better configuration could be had online for significantly less. Well, less if I discount the fact that I had to pay taxes, shipping and handling... and then have my cousin FedEx it all the way from New York to me here in Manila. It wasn’t too smart, once I factored in the taxes, intercontinental shipping, customs fees and, of course, customs bribes. Ah, graft and corruption.

Anyway, I was happy to hear that my cousin would be coming here for vacation in July – which gave me about two months to make up my mind and purchase the thing, taking building and shipping times into account.

And so began my obsessive quest to build my ideal workhorse. After fooling around with Dell’s online configurator for about three weeks, I was glad to hear that the D830’s would be given a Santa Rosa refresh – important to me as I wanted the improved battery life, and I wanted to future-proof it for at least three to four more years. Still, however, I held off on buying since there were still no options for discrete graphics. Finally, on the 15^th of June, the new Latitudes received the nVidiaQuadros – in particular, the D830 got the NVS140m. I immediately picked up the phone and made an international phone call to place my order. Since I already knew exactly what I wanted, the call took all of twenty minutes. The CSR gave me multiple upgrades without my asking, such as the hard drive (I had asked for a 100GB), the Bluetooth card and the warranties (I had asked for 3-year business, he upgraded me to 4-year NBD with international coverage and Accidental Damage). All in all, it came to around 800 dollars more than I was willing to spend, but for the value I was getting (considering the relatively high price of components and accessories here in the Philippines) it was worth it. I also figured I was saving on international shipping so that gave me a bit more leeway.

I also told him that I was worried about the lead times on building and shipping as my cousin was set to leave in less than two weeks. He said he would try to expedite my case but could not promise anything. Amazingly, the accessories package arrived the following Tuesday, and the laptop package itself arrived two days later. Wow! All in under a week. That really blew me away.

Unfortunately, there was an error in the confirmation e-mail I received. The CSR had mistakenly added a Kensington Notebook Lock in my accessories order, and omitted the Interlink Electronics Bluetooth Expresscard Remote. I’ll address these issues later, under Customer Support.

Other than that, everything arrived as expected and in excellent time and quality. All I had to do now, was wait for my cousin to arrive... one week and counting...

Build &amp; Design:

My wife and I picked up them up at the airport past midnight, and I could barely contain my excitement. We dropped them off at their house, and they came over the following morning. My package had finally arrived. Boy, was I giddy.

The first thing I did was open up the accessories package. Everything was there, as expected, including the notebook lock. In hindsight, I am glad for the mistake. I realize that there will be times I will have to leave my notebook attached to some projector or video system during an event, and the lock will only help me feel a bit more secure. But I digress.

Finally, after much personal and spiritual ceremony, I opened the laptop package. After wading through the two booklets, the 4 media (Vista Ultimate, Drivers and Diagnostics, McAfee Antivirus and Roxio Creator), and the two AC Adapters, I finally made it through to the laptop.

I was impressed with the weight build and feel of this computer – it just feels so much better when you hold it and you knowit’s yours. The body is constructed from a very sturdy magnesium alloy that is absolutely a wonder to hold. Bear in mind, however, that the LCD bezel and the frame of the keyboard area (the black border housing the speakers and keyboard) is plastic, and not magnesium. I’m not sure why they didn’t just construct the entire chassis in the alloy as I think it would have given a better feel to the whole thing. However, it feels very solid, and you get the immediate feeling that this baby is gonna last you a long while. I can attest to the fact that there is absolutely NO flex in the top casing, except when you grab both ends and twist it left and right. But even then, the flex did not affect the screen whatsoever. No ripples here, anywhere. The hinge action is superb, and I can easily open and close the system with one hand – the base does not lift when opening it.

It is, however, HEAVY. I thought I had grown used to the weight of my X1000, and thought I wouldn’t really get a heavier notebook unless I would move up to a 17”. But overall, the weight has not been that much of a problem for me since I’m already used to lugging close to 15 pounds of office stuff in my backpack.

Unfortunately, the build is not without its minor faults. First of all, there is a tiny gap between the lid and the base when the laptop is closed, giving about a millimetre and a half of wiggle when pressing the two together. Not too big a deal, except it spoiled what would have been an otherwise near-perfect build.

Second, the lid latch wiggles.

Here you can see it down...

...and then up, as I wiggled the catches.

And, as mentioned in the forums here, the Wi-Fi Catcher switch also has a bit of give. I was disappointed in these minor faults as I expected nothing but excellent construction and action from a business line.

The Wi-Fi Catcher down...

...and up.

As mentioned, the design is very understated and I was worried I was going to grow to hate its no-nonsense looks. Nothing has changed dramatically in the chassis and design from the previous D830 and 820 builds and it does not suffer for it. The charcoal-gray lid and base and the plain black inner frames seemed bland to me at first. What surprised me is that in the nearly two weeks since I’ve gotten it I’ve grown to like, if not love the overall look of it.

From the back.

Here is a series of size comparisons with my 15.4” MacBook Pro and Compaq Presario X1000.

From the left, D830, the MacBook Pro, and the X1000.

Taken from the left.

Back to back with the MBP

Face to face with the MBP again

The three systems stacked:

Stack Front

Stack Left

Stack Right

Stack Rear

One thing I nearly forgot to mention, and this is something I already posted in these forums. A few days after I received the notebook, I popped in LOTR: The Two Towers to watch before going to sleep. I had propped the notebook up on a stand on the edge of the bed, a comfortable viewing angle for my wife and I. Unfortunately, at some point in the movie I fell asleep. I know this, because I awoke to the sound of my laptop crashing the two and a half feet to the ground from the top of my bed. I was stupefied. I panicked, then slowly made my way to the edge of the bed, fearful of peering over to the floor.

When I finally did, I found the Latitude upright on its left side. I picked it up and found it without a scratch. The movie was finished and e-mail was still coming in.

Thank God for durability like this.

Build Features

Ambient Light Sensor

When I heard of the inclusion of an Ambient Light Sensor in the D830, I got excited. I thought to myself, “here is a good power-saving function that just happens to look pretty cool.” Unfortunately, in practice it doesn’t come off as impressive as the implementation found in the MacBook Pro. I found the shifting very subtle, almost indiscernibly so. And the ALS tends to err on the low side, meaning the brightness setting it chooses for the current environmental lighting conditions is usually one or two notches lower than I would have chosen. Even if you set the upper and lower limits in the ALS Preferences to higher values, the sensor adjustments are not relative values. Rather, they are absolute to the available light. This means that in the darkest conditions, it will still choose your lowest brightness preference. But in increasingly brighter conditions, it will choose a setting based on an absolute set of values relative to the lighting, and not relative to your settings.

Below are the lighting controls, activated with the key and the cursor keys:

Unfortunately, there is a command key here that is telling of Dell’s OEM tendencies.

At first I thought it had something to do with the keyboard, but upon inspecting the Quickset Program...

...I found no mention of the + right arrow key. Pressing this combination does absolutely nothing. Even in the Performance Monitor, this combination has no effect whatsoever on the CPU activity monitor. It turns out this key is used to activate the Dell equivalent of the “ThinkLight,” that is, a keyboard illumination lamp. Unfortunately, this feature is obviously not on the Latitude D830. Instead, it can be found only on the ATG model. I really wish they would use a different key set for their different models.

Ports

Now let’s go over the various I/O ports. First up, the left side:

Here we can see the:

• Steel Reinforced Notebook Lock Slot - the Lock Slot, designed for locks from Kensington and the like, has been reinforced with steel, making it more difficult to simply rip the lock off, gouging the plastic.
• Air Vent - Warms up and blows fairly firmly when needed.
• 1394 Firewire port - Primarily for high-speed data transfer from devices such as digital video cameras.
• Microphone In - Self-explanatory, though I haven’t needed to use this at all.
• Headphones Out - Sel-explanatory, output quality is surprisingly good.
• Expresscard Slot - I don’t see any real use for this in the future, other than a storage / charging slot for my Interlink Electronics Bluetooth Remote
• Wi-Fi Catcher toggle and Status Light - I love this feature. Primarily serves as physical toggle to turn the wireless card(s) on and off. It can be configured to control either the Wi-Fi card, the Bluetooth card, or both. The secondary function serves as a Wi-Fi scanner. When you push this switch to the right and hold it there, you can get four different feedback indications:
  • Solid Green: Unrestricted Access Point available
  • Flashing Green: Searching for AP networks
  • Solid Yellow: Restricted or Weak AP network found
  • Flashing Yellow: Error
  • No LED: No networks found
• PC Card Slot (PCMCIA) - A legacy slot, at this point. I don’t see any future need for this for me, unless I can find a PCMCIA media card reader for SD/MMC and / or Compact Flash cards.
• Smart Card Slot - Security measure, Smart Cards can be used in conjunction with passwords and / or the biometric scanner for enhanced security. These three can be used to lock down the BIOS, the Hard Drive, OS, or all three.

On the right side:

• Media Bay - In my case, I opted for the DVD-RW optical drive. This can be replaced with a 6-cell battery or the floppy drive. All media bay devices are hot-swappable, meaning you can simply pull the existing one out and drop in another device without having to restart the Operating System.
• Media Bay Release Switch - This is used to remove the media bay device. I will show later on how this is done.
• 2 USB 2.0 Ports - Compatible with all USB 2.0 and 1.1 devices. I find it a bit annoying, however, how these ports are stacked too closely to each other. If you have a bulky flash drive plugged into one of these (or for that matter any USB connector slightly larger than the standard) you’ve effectively killed the use of the other one. Thankfully, there is one more USB port in the rear, but with some dongles larger than others, this may soon become an issue for me.

Rear Ports

• Ethernet - Standard RJ-45 Ethernet Port.
• S-Video Out - Primarily for TV-out. I would have liked HDMI or DVI instead of this, though.
• Powered USB 2.0 Port - Compatible with all USB 2.0 and 1.1 devices, the additional connector here is available to power devices requiring more than 5V.
• Modem - Standard RJ-11 Port.
• Serial Port - Connects legacy serial devices such as older mice.
• DB-15 (VGA) Port - Connects to VGA-compatible displays such as monitors and VGA-capable TVs.
• AC Power - Port for the AC Adapter, to power the laptop and charge the battery/ies.
• Air Vent - Warms up and blows fairly firmly when needed.

Under

• Docking Connector - Compatible with all D-Family Docking Solutions. In case you want to spare yourself the hassle of reconnecting all your peripherals (such as an external monitor, mouse, USB devices such as hard drives, etc.) when stationary. You can connect all these to the dock and simply click the notebook into place and all these devices will be recognized and usable by your computer. I did not opt for the dock as I am seldom stationary, but my experience with docking solutions from IBM (Lenovo) finds this a very useful option.
• Memory Module Cover - One DIMM slot is available under this cover.
• Air Vent - Warms up and blows more strongly than the two other fans on this system. Under heavy use and the system is plugged in, this tends to become quite warm, making it difficult to use on your lap for extended periods. I recommend a tray, a cooling stand or Belkin’s @home solutions when in bed or on a couch – or anywhere that isn’t at a desk.
• Battery - You can choose between 6-cell and 9-cell batteries, and the form factors are identical. I like this very much as one of the reasons I disliked the Thinkpads was that the larger cell batteries would stick out from the body like a tumor.
• Battery Release Catch - Push to release.
• Strike Zone Protected Hard Drive - The Strike Zone is a “reinforced area of the platform base that protects the hard drive by acting as a dampening device when a computer experiences resonating shock or is dropped (whether the computer is on or off).” (from the system documentation.) Basically, if you happen to drop your Latitude, the hard drive should, theoretically, be safe.

Keyboard Features

Keyboard Overview

• Sleep (Fn) - Puts the OS to sleep.
• Battery Meter (Fn) - Launches the Battery Meter, so you can check on the charge status and health of your batter(ies)
• LCD Fill Aspect (Fn) - Switches between widescreen (16:9) and standard aspect (4:3) ratio displays.
• CRT / LCD Toggle (Fn) - Cycles between LCD only, external only and simultaneous video displays.
• Speakers - Stereo speakers. They’re pretty loud, too, for the most part.
• Trackpoint and Buttons - For those who just can’t live without their beloved Thinkpad analogues, the trackpoint is here for you. Personally, I don’t use it that much due to its finicky sensitivity, especially the push-to-click option. This can be disabled, however.
• Touchpad and Buttons - As with most laptops, nothing new to say here.
• Biometric Scanner (Fingerprint Reader) - Used to log in various credentials for BIOS, OS and website access with a mere swipe of a finger. The built in TPM system allows up to 21 unique prints to be saved. So, that’s your ten fingers, your ten toes... and I don’t know... your nose, I guess. In practice, I found it to be a major boon for logging into Windows. Also, on occasion swiping my finger wouldn’t work. It would accept the data, and then I’d get an error message, stating that “there are no fingerprints enrolled for this user.” When I manually type my user name and swipe my finger again, however, it works just fine.

But my experience with the Vault and actually successfully using it to log in to websites has been mixed. With the former, I simply can’t get it to work properly. With the latter, it would work...sometimes. The dialog box would pop up only sporadically whenever I surfed to web pages with login screens. And, strangely enough, after I formatted and reinstalled Windows, the Private Information Manager (that’s the name of the program) would only work on Internet Explorer. How VERY strange. I’ve consulted with three Gold techs on this issue and none of them have been able to solve it yet. I certainly don’t want to have to format and reinstall my OS once AGAIN just to solve this problem.

One thing I forgot to mark in the photo is the built-in microphone. It’s that tiny little hole immediately to the left of the right screen hinge, above the Num Lock and Pause keys.

Status Lights

• Power Status Light - Turns on when computer is on
• Hard Drive Status Light - Blinks when data is being read from or written to the hard drive
• Battery Status Light - Turns on steadily to indicate battery status, whether low or charging
• Wireless Status Light - Turns on when Wi-Fi is enabled (see Wi-Fi Catcher)
• Bluetooth Status Light - Turns on when Bluetooth is enabled (see Wi-Fi Catcher)

One key feature I wish this notebook had was a media card reader. I am glad that the generally useless (for me, at least) IR port was removed, but I also would have liked the option to replace the Smart Card reader with an SD/MMC/MS reader. Or, alternatively, use the front edge of the laptop and stick the reader there. Unless I’m unaware of a really good reason why businesses do not want this feature on their laptops.

With all that out of the way, let’s move on to the screen.

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Screen:

As I mentioned earlier, one of my major considerations on the purchase of my new laptop was a high resolution screen. A VERY high resolution screen. Working with vectors, photos and spreadsheets, I appreciate all the real estate I can get. I wanted at least a WSXGA+, and was willing to experiment with a WUXGA one.

Okay, let me just get it off my chest right now. I was quite disappointed with the brightness level of the screen. VERY disappointed. The Dell documentation and tech specs claim the 15.4” WUXGA (1920 x 1200) panel as having a 200 nits (cd/m²)brightness level, but I can say that those numbers aren’t as “average” as they seem. In a review posted at Notebookcheck.com, it was shown that the overall average brightness level of the screen is more likely ±150 nits or cd/m². In fact, the highest brightness level topped out at around only 180 nits. There are 8 levels of brightness overall, though the bottom two settings are fairly useless except in certain lighting conditions (I’ve found that dusk is a good use for the lowest brightness setting. That’s it, though. Only at dusk.

A look into the Device Manager shows this to be manufactured by SEC – Seiko Epson. Not one of the best, if not generally agreed upon as one of Dell’s worst suppliers.

From Left to right, MacBook Pro, D830, X1000

Oddly enough, as you can see from these photos, the D830 is a tad brighter than the other two laptops I have.

This can be seen better from left and right angles.

Overall, picture quality is rather good, however. Text is crisp, even on the extreme low end of small fonts (such as on the leftmost sidebar of the NBR page)

I found that either squinting or moving up close to the text (or just plain staring at it until it comes into focus) helps in reading fonts below 8 points. Otherwise, it can become a bit of a headache. So in text, it’s a bit of a headache to read but with images and photos, it’s absolutely beautiful.

The matte coating is also pretty good and still quite usable in glare and other inclement lighting conditions.

Screen 0° from Glare, Text

Screen 45° from Glare, Text

Screen 90° from Glare, Text

As you can see from the shots above, text is still quite legible and readable even with the light source directly behind you.

Light distribution and Leakage

In the next two images, we will see the rather uneven distribution of backlighting in this SEC panel.

From this screen, we can see the glaringly obvious darkened spots resulting from the uneven backlighting. The dark spots can be seen in the four corners, and there is an overall “haze” or “halo” of uneven lighting throughout the panel.

Here you can see the leakage occurring at the bottom of the panel. The gradation is pretty strong.

In the following picture, I lengthened my exposure time and lowered my aperture so you can see the gradation better, in relation to the rest of the panel. Take not that the topmost part is, in reality, still deep black and not a dark gray as shown here.

Viewing Angles

Here we shall examine the various viewing angles that are still feasible for this screen.

Photos

Viewing Angle Acute

We can see here that the acute angle is the worst as discoloration occurs and quite quickly we lose definition in images. The screen also tends to display a negative image from anything below a 45 degree angle.

Viewing Angle Obtuse

Obtuse angles are better, as the polarization that occurs actually increases the contrast. It still doesn’t make the picture quality any prettier, though.

Viewing Angle Left

Viewed from the left or the right, image quality is still top-notch.

Viewing Angle Right

Text

Viewing Angle Acute

Again, we can see that the acute angle is the worst as discoloration occurs and quite quickly we lose readability and the ability to discern distinctions in images and copy.

Viewing Angle Obtuse

The obtuse viewing angle is much better than the acute angle, with copy retaining definition far better in the positive angle scope than in the negative (from 90 degrees).

Viewing Angle Left

Viewing text from the left or right, definition retention is still excellent, and readability is hampered only by your own personal ability to discern font sizes being used.

Viewing Angle Right

Overall, I am quite disappointed with the quality of this screen, mostly due to its non-existent brightness. I actually considered calling Dell up to have it replaced with an IPS panel (I don’t know if Dell uses them for the Latitude line of screens, though.) In the end, I decided the fact that I had to pay for all labor and services performed on my device was enough of a reason for me to put up with this screen. At least, until I travel to a country that will honor my 4-year NBD Gold Warranty.

Speakers:

Now this was a confusing part for me to review. Overall, the speakers are excellent. For a laptop, of course. Highs and mids are good, and the bass frequencies are passable. Now I use the speakers primarily to play music back in iTunes or Windows Media Player while working, so the computer doesn’t really act as a piece of entertainment equipment. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the quality and volume levels for most needs.

The problem began, however, when I launched Media Center. I popped in one of my favourite movies of all time, Almost Famous: The Bootleg Edition. I was stumped: the volume levels for all the content on BOTH DVDs were ridiculously low. The only way I could understand the film was with the subtitles on. I double-checked the levels in Media Center (50/50) and in Windows itself, where all the options for all applications were at 100%. I asked around at the NBR Dell Forum, and was told by some that their volume levels were fine. Quite loud, in fact. So I went back and launched Media Player. And my music was LOUD. I launched iTunes. And my music was LOUD. So I went back into Media Center and played music, this time. Yes, it was LOUD.

I was confused. So I popped in a different DVD. Pink Floyd’s P.U.L.S.E., the live concert video. NOW I was getting somewhere. Volume levels for that and nine other movies / concert videos were acceptable, if not loud. So the problem lay in my original Almost Famous DVDs. I popped it back in and tried all the audio settings. PCM. DTS. Dolby Stereo.Dolby 5.1. And nothing changed. The audio was still low.

I still haven’t resolved this strange issue, but have in fact discovered at least two other DVDs with the same audio problems. So I’m not sure if this is a compatibility issue with certain types of audio streams, or just some odd glitch. In any case, I’m looking forward to a driver update that can fix this. The concept of portable entertainment goes out the window when you have to lug 6 extra pounds of speakers and power bricks around.

As for the headphone port, the quality out of it is significantly better. All frequencies are represented well across the band. I plugged in my ancient 500W 2.1 JBL speakers and music boomed across the house with crisp, clear tones. There were no apparent crackles or signal issues with the port. I also particularly like that the ports are off to the left side of the chassis. This is because I don’t like having anything plugged in between me and the keyboard. At the same time, while in bed or otherwise reclining, I usually rest the lower edge of the frame on my waist. A earphone plugged there would be an uncomfortable inconvenience.

Processor and Performance:

I ordered my Latitude with the T7500, 2.2GHz of 800MHz goodness. I also equipped it with 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM. So naturally, you can assume I expected nothing but a snappy overall experience. If anything, the 120GB 5400rpm drive would be the only bottleneck in the system. But what I experienced could not be blamed solely on the relatively pokey hard drive.

Even before I installed anything on this computer, it was SLOW. The first boot after the initial setup took well over two minutes to get to a usable desktop. Now I read that Vista really does take a while in its first few hours or boots as it indexes all your files for snappy searches. Well, I’ve had this computer for exactly two weeks now, and it still takes its sweet time with a lot of things. The first thing that I noticed was the consistently slow boot up. A cold boot consistently takes between 2:48 and 3:32 minutes to a usable desktop.

Then, coming out of hibernation or standby isn’t any better either. Standby, depending on whether you’ve manually initiated it or if it’s recovering from standby from inactive use, can sometimes take anywhere from as long as twenty seconds to a full minute. In one miserable case, I waited over ten minutes for it to come out of standby. Hibernation is hit or miss, as sometimes it comes out snappily (fourteen seconds, my shortest time) to never. It sometimes hangs completely, and the only way to get it out of this state is to power down and then back up again.

Initially, I thought the problems were caused by hardware and peripheral or device status changes between active and standby/hibernation modes. The first time the recovery took a long time, I had hibernated with the Western Digital Passport external hard drive plugged in. As I was taking the computer downstairs for a smoke, I unplugged the hard drive. Coming out of hibernation took a little over two minutes. The next time it happened, the device in question was the Revolution VX cordless mouse. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to reliably reproduce this bug consistently, so I can’t squarely fault the OS on it.

On average, I’m a web addict, so I normally have anywhere from one browser window to six windows with twelve tabs of pages each, open at any given time. As I mentioned earlier, these run side-by-side with Outlook, Word, Excel and multiple folders for work files. My system tray programs (after eliminating various Adobe, iTunes and other superfluous “helper” startup programs) are usually Dell’s Quickset, Yahoo Messenger and AIM, McAfee Security Center and Logitech’s Setpoint. But even simple tasks such as Photo Gallery’s and Picasa’s slide show are not smooth, with transitions frequently being choppy. The occasional DVD-video playback would often result in choppy video, but lag-free audio, pointing to a possible display driver problem.

Don’t get me wrong, this is an otherwise fast system. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop take between 8 and 14 seconds each to load up to a usable workspace. All of Office 2007 boots up in under 3 seconds. So the thing I don’t understand is why boot times and recovery from various standby or sleep states take so long, even with the Power Settings on “High Performance.” I tested the restoring in “Power Saver” and “Balanced” modes, and the times were even more severe.

Two other issues I had – and that which most people with the new discrete graphic card builds of the the Santa Rosa Latitudes (D630/D830 with NVS135M/140M) have also had – are the sluggish feel of Vista’s Aero theme, and the video card’s propensity to crash and display errors.

For the former, I immediately noticed it when I first pulled up Flip-3D, Vista’s much-touted and ballyhooed 3D update to multitask viewing. There is a very slight delay – milliseconds, even – before the window “stack” appears, and even more (albeit smaller) delays when actually flipping through the stack. Granted, these delays are infinitesimal, but they add up to ruining an otherwise silky-smooth GUI experience. Personally, OSX’ Exposé does a much better – and much more useful – job. But I digress; we’re not here to review Vista.

As for the crashes, I received one almost immediately after booting up Windows for the first time. I had just completed the set up, and started toying around with Vista’s new toys when the whole screen suddenly went black. It resumed after a few seconds, and an error balloon in the system tray informed me that the display driver had stopped working, and recovered from an error. Over the next few days, I began to notice that the display driver would crash far more frequently whenever Dreamscene (part of Vista Ultimate’s “Extras”. Basically, it’s animated wallpaper) was active. In one instance, my entire wallpaper was replaced with what looked like a garbled display memory dump.

After reading various threads in this forum, I updated the default drivers. First with Dell’s own drivers, on their support page. While the problems became less frequent, I still wasn’t satisfied with the overall performance, so I downloaded updated Forceware drivers from LaptopVideo2Go. Since then, performance has been much snappier, while the crashes occur just a little less frequently. I look forward to the day nVidia finally releases some final Vista-32 drivers with a modicum of stability.

As for gaming performance... well, I don’t really intend to play any games on this system. Between work and taking care of my 4-month old baby, I’d be surprised if I even had a chance to turn on the X-Box for a few minutes. AND... I don’t think I really want to try any games until the video driver issues can be resolved.

Overall, I was expecting much more bang-for-my-buck with my level of system configuration. I actually spoke to a Dell Gold Support representative about this and he pointed me to various driver updates on the corporate Support Page - In particular, the video drivers. Unfortunately, while they did solve some of the problems (the video crashes are slightly less frequent), they did nothing to resolve the speed and performance of the system.

Benchmarks:

Below is basically a run-through of standard performance tests. Note that I had upgraded the video card driver first from Dell’s own Support Site, and then finally to the latest version from LaptopVideo2Go.com. The differences were to be seen primarily in PCMark05 and 3DMark06, where the numbers gained significant increases, ranging from 1,000 to 2,0000 marks. Other than that, all test were conducted on a fresh cold boot, and then by disabling all TSR programs and services, leaving only volume control, battery meter and the network connections. All wireless connections were disabled, as was the actual hardware switch.

Windows Experience Index

SuperPi

PCMark05

3DMark03

3DMark06

HD Tune

Hard drive temperature ranged between 41 and 46 degrees Celsius.

Everest Memory Latency

Everest Memory Read

Everest Memory Write

Heat and Noise:

When I first got the system, I didn’t quite push it to its limits yet. As I said, a few browser windows open here and there, a few documents open in Photoshop and Illustrator, maybe iTunes running in the background, and so on. As such, I didn’t notice it getting particularly hotter even after a few hours of use. In fact, it remained cool enough as to be usable on my lap. The fan would rarely, if ever, kick in.

However, as my ownership wore on, and as I started doing more processor-intensive operations (and, yes, that includes gaming) I noticed that the system was starting get warmer and warmer on average. I didn’t check actual sectional temperatures, but with Speedfan, the processor would range from 34-52 degrees, depending on what I was doing. And as the days went by, I could work with it on my lap less and less often. So now I use a breakfast tray in bed. The hottest areas I found were the fan vent (obviously) directly to the left of the system, near the LCD hinge (see the photos), the hard drive, and the top middle of the under-chassis. As I haven’t opened the system up, I’ll assume the processors live there. One thing: as the hours go by, the AC adapter (both of them) would heat up quite a bit, making it a bit worrisome to wrap up and throw in your bag if you’re in a hurry.

As the fan kicks in, it is only really discernible if you’re in a relatively quiet room without any other distractions. But when you do hear it, it’s a bit surprisingly loud. The spinning doesn’t always last so long, however, so I can only assume that the fans activates long enough to cool the heated components to acceptable temperature levels, and then powers down to a lower speed.

The optical drive is pretty quiet, and its spinning seldom distracts me from whatever I’m doing. Unlike my previous Windows system, this optical drive doesn’t feel like an earthquake under my wrists.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

How easy is the keyboard and touchpad to use, how do you like the placement of buttons on the notebook or do you wish there were more buttons for things such as volume control? Does the keyboard &quot;flex&quot; at all (this means the keyboard sags a little bit and other keys around a key you are pressing go down as you push the intended key)?

The keyboard is surprisingly quite good, although in the words of the multitudes, &quot;it ain't a Thinkpad.&quot; The key travel is good, and it doesn't generate a lot of loud clicking or tapping sounds. As for the feel, it's soft, with a little give, but not mushy at all.

One caveat, though. There is a small, yet pronounced flex in the keyboard that dips just over a millimeter. As far as I can tell, the region of flexing is bounded by the following keys (in rows, from top to bottom): F3-F6; 3-7; W-Y; and then lightly, from S-G.

If you're a light and fast touch typist, it won't bother you at all.

I especially appreciate the layout of all the keys, and I’ll go through them point by point:

1. The Function and Control keys are “in the correct spots” which simply means the Control key is to the LEFT of the Function key, as it is on the majority of keyboards, and is a layout I have long gotten used to. I find the placement of the control key to the extreme left of the entire keyboard makes it more intuitive to hold (with my pinkie) while executing shortcuts. If the Function key were there (which I don’t really use that often, except maybe for adjusting the screen brightness ), I’d have to wrench my finger into strange angles in order to hit the Ctrl. Having gotten used to using the pinkie on the Ctrl and my thumb or index on the appropriate letter key, I like this layout very much.


2. The print screen, num lock and pause keys are all aligned at the top row, and laid out as they would be on a standard desktop keyboard. Which I like.


3. The document navigation keys (Insert, Home, Page Up, Delete, End and Page Dn) are also arranged as they would be on a desktop, split into two rows of three. I find this layout the most convenient as it means I can jump right in and use them, as opposed to relearning positions and stealing glances at the keyboard while typing. Having them in the upper right corner of the keyboard also works for me, as they are in an accessible place, yet far enough so they don’t get in the way when I don’t need them I actually don’t like the layout favoured by Asus and the current Inspirons / Vostros where they are shoved into one column to the right of the keyboard. To me, that’s just poor design and it even messes up my touch-typing with the enter and backslash keys.


4. The volume control keys are in a good place, though I sometimes which they weren’t so mushy.


5. The placement of the lighting controls on the directional keys is intuitive, as it makes sense to hit “up” when you want to make it brighter, and vice-versa. I wish they would move out of the OEM oversights and take out the silkscreened keyboard light icon as used in the ATG systems.

As for the touchpad, I will admit I did not like it at first. The surface felt a bit too small and slight texturing threw me off. I am used to the smoothness of other touchpads (almost like glossy plastic) and I appreciated the friction they provided. I also must note that due to the size of the touchpad and the high resolution of the WUXGA screen, accuracy is a little more difficult without practice. ESPECIALLY with the trackpoint. At first I had a dickens of a time clicking on those tiny hyperlinks (see screenshot of NBR earlier in this review for reference), and this was with the touchpad. After adjusting the sensitivity to maximum and turning on pointer precision, it became a lot easier to use. The recessed nature of the touchpad still annoys me, however, as when I try to scroll up and down documents my fingertip brushes against the frame.

The buttons are mushier than I would have liked, since my preference is light buttons with low travel and a distinguishable click at the end. As for the biometric (fingerprint) scanner, I don’t like the OEM approach take by Dell, simply wedging it in between the two touchpad buttons. It feels a little like it was just thrown in, and not made a serious feature or component of the system, unlike in Thinkpads, Pavilions or some Toshiba systems.

As for the trackpoint (or the pointing stick, as they like to call it). At first I thought I would appreciate it and like it, as it made for very convenient navigation while typing. The position of the button makes it easy to mouse around without taking your hands off the keyboard. Unfortunately, I’ve found in practice that it just doesn’t work for me. I have adjusted my sensitivity settings over and over, but I can’t seem to find the right mix of travel, acceleration and sensitivity. All too often I overshoot a button or the place in the document I want to put my cursor on. I understand it will be harder with a resolution as high as mine, but I was expecting it to work better for me – I was a little excited to experience what Thinkpad users have been enjoying all these years. Nowadays, I only use it in tight, cramped situations (i.e., economy class, or in bed where there’s too much strain on the wrist to use the trackpad.

Can you tell I use my computer in bed a WHOLE LOT?

The mouse buttons for the pointing stick are the same as those on the touchpad – mushy, but otherwise alright.

I’ve found that the best solution (most of the time) is to just plug in the Logitech VX Revolution I purchased with this system.

I have one quibble to make, however, and it’s a software conflict I’ve been having ever since XPSP2. The Logitech Setpoint Drivers. For some reason, they always reset my trackpoint settings to default whenever Windows reboots. I’ve done everything I could short of uninstalling it (but that would leave me without the ability to use my tilts, zooms and search button on my Revolution VX ) but I still can’t seem to get my sensitivity settings to stick. This is a problem I’ve been having even in XP. If there’s anyone out there with a solution to this, I would love to hear from you.

Input and Output Ports:

I went through a fairly thorough listing of all the ports above, so I’ll only list my thoughts on each here.

1. The PCMCIA (or PC Card) slot is something I don’t see myself needing at any time, but as legacy support for older devices, I’ll appreciate its inclusion. Especially since ExpressCard isn’t nearly as widely adopted yet.


2. The ExpressCard slot I will use primarily for my Bluetooth media remote control (The Interlink Media Electronics one)... but since it hasn’t arrived yet, I can’t comment on it or the remote control.


3. Microphone and speaker ports work well, without any signal issues or noise.


4. The firewire port works as expected, pretty darn fast. I use it exclusively for importing videos from my DVI camera, and performance has been very good so far.


5. The VGA port works as expected, I only use it to plug into projectors for presentations, and there haven’t been any issues at all.


6. The parallel port I have no use for, but for people who do... well, here it is.


7. Modem – I only plug this in when sending and receiving faxes, and it’s performed well so far.


8. Gigabit Ethernet – now this one I don’t really use at all, since I’m always wireless. But as tested, it performs with no packet loss and with moderately consistent throughput.


9. USB with powered D-Bay port. I don’t have any devices that require the additional power, but my use of that USB port (as well as the other two) have been relatively good. There are some occasions where the system fails to recognize an external hard drive or two (and in one rare case, failed to recognize any of my four Logitech mice), however. I have not had this issue checked or verified yet by either tech support or the local Authorized Service Provider.
   
   My main complaint with the two USB ports on the right side is that they are spaced too closely together. When I want to plug in some peripherals or external hard drives (or flash disks), I find it a little difficult to squeeze them in, what with one on top of the other, and too tightly. Another complaint I’ve got is that the optical drive is placed a little too close to these ports. Anything with a width over half a centimetre too wide will prevent the ODD from opening and closing properly.


10. S-Video. Personally, I would have preferred a DVI or even an HDMI port here. Legacy support can only go so far, and this connectivity option is fast going out of style.

Like I said earlier, I really would have liked to see a Media Card Reader as well, such as for SD/MMC and Compact Flash.

Wireless:

I opted for the Intel 4965 AGN WLAN card and the Dell 360 Bluetooth module. Throughput and bandwidth speeds and reliability with the WLAN card have been very good, but since I live in 50 square meter apartment, range is not something I’m readily capable of testing. There are many networks, however, that I can find and connect to that my X1000 and MacBook Pro can’t even find, so in that sense, I must assume it’s a much better card.

Bluetooth, I only use for synchronizing my Treo 650 and Blackberry 7130g, and I’ve had no problems with it at all. Sending and receiving files between this and the MacBook Pro have also been seamless, even from up to 20 feet away.

This system does not come with an Infared port. Which is just as well, since I haven’t “beamed” anything since the Palm Vx days.

Battery:

The battery on this system is very good, for its specifications and size. I would have gotten the Media Bay battery, but I find I need the optical drive more often, and I’m not far away removed from outlets for long enough periods of time.

Surfing on three windows of Firefox with about 8 pages open on each, editing documents on Word and Excel (2007), editing photos on Photoshop CS2, WiFi on (but not Bluetooth) and brightness set to 6/8 with Power Saver mode, I get just over three hours on it. With brightness at its lowest settings, Wi-fi and Bluetooth off, just typing away at Word and Excel, I can get around five hours. Not bad, when working on long bus or plane trips!

Of course, I wish it would last longer, but then again – who doesn’t, right?

The batteries also come with the incredibly handy battery meter. This is a set of five green LEDs that indicate the amount of charge the battery is currently holding. Simply push the button (indicated in the picture above) and the lights will turn on. Hold the button longer, and you get your battery health meter. My main complaint is that the button is a little difficult to depress, and I only get it right the first time when I use my nail to push it in. Not as convenient as the simple clicking button on the MacBook Pro’s battery.

I will also say this... what the heck is up with that AC adapter? Why is it so darned BIG??

Operating System and Software:

I requested Vista Ultimate on this system, as I was very excited to explore this latest iteration without any limits. My primary reasons for choosing it were:

1. BitLocker, which, sadly, has NOT proven be as useful nor as simple to use as I had expected.


2. Dreamscene. If I’m getting a highly spec’d system, I want something that’ll show it off, even when I’m not doing anything.


3. Media Center – to watch movies on my off times


4. Complete PC Backup and Restore – because this is still my primary work system, I want to keep all my workspaces, settings and files safe.


5. I like having the best.

I received the Drivers and Diagnostics and the Vista 32-Bit installation disc (which is not a full install, but more like a recovery / upgrade disc). I’ve only used these discs once, when the Dell Authorized Service Provider, Micro-D, decided the best way to resolve all my issues was to reinstall everything from scratch.

I must say, however, that I am VERY disappointed with the lack of updates for the Ultimate Extras. Here was something I was really looking forward to – and all I’ve got is a poker game and language packs I can’t even use? Also, I am a bit disappointed that even with my specs, Media Center is a little sluggish.

I was very pleased to find a distinct lack of crap on my system fresh out of the box. The only third party software installed was McAfee’s Internet Suite, Roxio Media Creator (both of which I requested) and Google Sidebar (which I didn’t ask for). I promptly uninstalled the sidebar and reverted to the Vista Sidebar instead. Like I said, the lack of bloat was inspiring and refreshing. Unfortunately, this did nothing to mitigate the slow performance I was getting from the system (cold boots would take as long as three minutes!) From the first boot, I was already getting display driver crashes, mostly due to Dreamscene. Consensus has agreed that it is all due to the immature Vista drivers of the graphics card, the nVidia Quadro NVS 140M. I have identified that Dreamscene is definitely the root cause of the driver instabilities as I’ve been running the system for nearly three weeks without using Dreamscene once and I’ve only experienced the display driver crash once in that time period. When I consulted a Gold Tech Support Representative, he told me that Dell would never release drivers without testing them first. When I told him I had already installed their newest drivers, and then reformatted and THEN reinstalled their new drivers... he had nothing more to say.

Other than that, the stock drivers have been pretty good, I haven’t encountered any other serious hardware issues except for the display and the optical drive. There are a few instances where the ODD spontaneously decides to “unmount” itself. By this I mean the hardware would simply disappear in my list of devices and in the Computer window. This would happen at random times, most often while attempting to burn DVDs. More on this when I get the chance to drop by the ASP’s office.

On a very unrelated side note... I really don’t see the point of Microsoft’s new Vista Product Key Sticker “Port Hole” feature. Why can’t people see it for what it is: a damaged product key label that won’t hold up over a few years of use?

Customer Support:

Here’s the story, and it’s a mixed bag. The first thing I would like to discuss was the quality of service I received in the processing of my order, and the subsequent order-related requests.

I placed my order on the 15^th, via phone. Even if I was calling from overseas, I figured the discounts and bargains I could get from haggling with the CSR would make up for my IDD rates. I had created a cart earlier in the day, and e-mailed it to him. As we were going through every item, he informed me of the upgrades available to me, at no additional cost. For this, I got the warranty and shipping upgrades at no additional cost (I requested 3-year Complete Care, he upgraded it to 4-year, he also gave free overnight shipping). He also gave me free upgrades on some accessories. I also told him that I needed the system to ship before the 26^th, as my cousin was departing for here that day, and she was going to bring them over for me. He initially told me he could not commit to a ship date (I worried over this since the new video cards stated that they would delay my ship date to the first or second week of July – WAY too late for me), but eventually told me he would upgrade my shipping and expedite and prioritize my build. The incredible thing is, it shipped completely in less than four days!

Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication in my order. When the CSR and I finished, we went over every item one by one, just to make sure. Unfortunately, when the e-mail confirmation arrived, the invoice did not include the Interlink Electronics Expresscard Media Remote Control. And, instead of it I found the Kensington Microsaver Notebook Lock. When I tried to call him back to clarify, offices had already closed for the weekend. I had three days before I could call him back and make the change.

Not wanting to risk the extra charges, I immediately wrote an e-mail off to Sales Support. I immediately received a response, and they apologized for the mistake. In two days, I received a confirmation that they would be sending me (my cousin) the remote control free of charge, and that I would not be required to return the notebook lock! That was plus one in my books.

The second case was after I received the unit. I used the system for a few hours when I realized I had ordered a surge protector. Not wanting to risk power surges any longer, I immediately plugged the notebook into it, and the surge protector into the grounded outlet. The next thing I heard was a pop, the next thing I smelt was burnt plastic. Thankfully, the notebook was unaffected. I went onto Dell Chat to speak to a rep about it and he tried to issue me an international dispatch replacement unit. Failing that (he didn’t have the clearance to authorize such a delivery), he then asked me to stay on hold as he tried to contact Malaysia for the part. When he couldn’t get in touch with them, he gave me their contact numbers and asked me to try them during regular office hours. But in the event that they could not do anything either, the CSR volunteered to refund the price of the accessory to me, as a credit note to my credit card. I eventually spoke to Dell Malaysia and they didn’t have the part in stock. In any case, I didn’t lose anything. So, plus one more point in my books, Dell.

The great thing in all of these conversations and e-mails was that the supervisors and case managers would all e-mail me, confirming the requested actions and asking if everything was going well. In one case, three supervisors all wrote me on separate occasions, asking if everything was going well and if the service and attention I received was satisfactory! So, plus, plus, plus!

And now the dark side of Dell Support. As most people can acknowledge, Dell’s Tech Support personnel aren’t always the smartest, neither are they always willing to go out of their way to help you. Thankfully, I have seldom received the short end of the stick when it comes to attention (my chats usually last around three hours on average, with the tech patiently walking me through every step.) However, there are some instances where the representative either had no idea what he was doing or was too tired to bother. As I said, was having problems with my display drivers immediately out of the box. When I asked a tech to help me resolve this, his first suggestion was to pull out the video card, motherboard and LCD panel! A bit extreme, I thought. However, since I wasn’t in the US this service would not be possible. After about ten minutes of insisting that he needed to gut my computer, we finally decided to try a more sober approach: drivers. When that failed, however, he then suggested I reformat my computer, as there may have been some errors in the installation of either the OS or the drivers from the factory floor. I refused to accept this, and once I left him I went over to LaptopVideo2Go.com for updated Forceware drivers. Granted, they didn’t completely remove my issues, but the new drivers DID help to stabilize them. It’s really the luck of the draw, but some of the tech support representatives are a tad bit alarmist.

I must also say that Dell Connect is an incredibly useful tool and I would recommend all other manufacturers begin implementing similar support systems. The ability to let the tech on the other end view your screen AND control your system to help diagnose and repair issues is invaluable and really goes a long way in helping resolve problems.

Overall, my impression and experience with Dell’s Customer Support has been superb. There have been some low points, but a quick e-mail to a Supervisor or Case Manager usually gets the job done, regardless of my issue. Keep in mind, however, that all my stories pertain to Gold Tech Support (as covered by my warranty). Your experiences may vary if you are getting the regular run-of-the-mill tech support.

Now, Authorized Service Providers are another story altogether. When you purchase the “International Warranty,” make sure you’re fully aware of the coverage you’re entitled to in the country you’re planning to reside for the length of your coverage. If, for instance, you purchase the 4-year Complete Care package with Accidental Damage (as I did), and you choose to stay in a country without a formal Dell Support Center and it only offers Parts-Only Warranty... then you’re out of luck. In my case, I purchased my warranty plan knowing full well that I would be receiving a crippled, Parts Only coverage (and one that I’d have to pay for to avail of, at that!) here in the Philippines. However, since I know I will be either travelling to New York for either vacation, work, or immigration in the next three years, I felt the extra cost of the warranty would eventually be worth it.

But going back to the ASP. In my situation, every incident or case that needed to be addressed by the ASP required a flat diagnostic fee, REGARDLESS of whether or not the issue was actually solved. Here, this fee is equivalent to 35 USD. I brought my display adapter issues to them and they said they would need to run a full diagnostic of the system (which I later found out was simply run off of my included DVD.) When they found no problems, they said they would need to reformat. Again, I was unusually (and mistakenly) too trusting. So I let them reformat. When I retrieved my system, all the same problems were there. With a few new ones. There were mistakes in my software installations. My username was misspelled. The TPM was disabled. Installed drivers were either incorrect or out of date. In other words, they made me pay 35 bucks for a reformat and OS reinstallation I could’ve done a much better job of. When I called them for a follow up on another unrelated issue, they said they would get back to me and e-mail me a quote. That was one month ago, and I still haven’t received any word. Overall, I’d give them a D-minus.

Caveat Emptor.Be sure you know what you’re getting into when you get your warranty.

Conclusion:

In the end, the Latitude D830 is a very good system with some stability and driver immaturity issues. It is an excellently built machine with solid components and excellent performance, hampered only by immature drivers and the limitations of the Operating System itself. As I have not attempted to install anything other than Vista, I cannot comment on any other OS’.

The target market of this system is clearly the business end of the spectrum, those looking for speed and performance with standard office applications, as well as some graphic processing requirements. If you’re looking to play newer games with high detail and performance, look elsewhere. But if you’re in the market for a strong (almost semi-rugged) laptop that can complete most of your office (or school) work with plenty of muscle to spare, the D830 is an excellent choice.

People looking for high-end gaming, look for something else. Look for Alienwares or Sagers or Voodoos. Peple looking for high-end graphics and animation workstations, look for the Precision system of your choice. But if you’re looking for a decent balance, the Latitude D830 will not disappoint.

PROS:

• Excellent, durable construction.


• Business-class aesthetics are clean and no-nonsense.


• Solid office application performance.


• Excellent battery life for the specifications.


• Discrete graphics deliver decent performance.


• Configuration options are plentiful.


• Resolution is excellent.


• Excellent keyboard.


• Wi-fi catcher is an excellent idea.

CONS:

• Business-class aesthetics are clean and no-nonsense.


• Discrete graphics not powerful enough for performance gaming; I would have liked better graphics options.


• Heavy.


• Can get very expensive.


• Can get warm if used extensively or for long periods.


• Screen isn’t as bright as I would have liked and has light leakage from the bottom.


• Speakers could be louder.


• Some minor build issues loose wi-fi catcher switch, battery, lid does not close tightly.


• Vista issues.

 

I don't think the user manual for the Latitude D830 is even this long Definitely the longest review on NBR ever. Nice job!

 

Excellent review, very detailed.

Just a question, the Z61 was replaced by the T61 widescreen, is there any reason you didn't consider that?

 

By far, one of the most impressive and comprehensive reviews I've seen on NBR. Thank you!

 

For $2700, I would have nabbed an 8510w with the WUXGA screen and Blu-Ray drive and just skipped the accessories.

...and yea, longest review ever.

 

I agree, either that or a T61p, both with a Quadro FX 570M.

 

great review, took almost two sittings to read.

I have to say although thats a good laptop the business lineups from HP and Lenovo seem to get a lot more positive feedback while the D630/830 is mixed.

 

I think this is probably the best review I've seen. Very detailed. I escpecially appreciate the details on the LCD and the build quality.


I dont think the light leakage is bad at all. I would put it as minor leakage. I would be quite happy with the screen

 

WOW....
Nice long and detailed review!

Anyway, in my opinion this is extremely overpriced for a mediocre system.

 

Excellent review. Very thorough especially with the comparisons between systems and the inclusion of conventional benchmarks. For the price I may have had to go with the T61p also...good choice on the logitech vx revolution and the WD passport drive.

 

I concur. $2700 is way overpriced. By at least $700

 

Wow great job! So many images and I love the way you did them. Oh I only wish Dell would just put an SD card slot on it...

 

Great review but..

The screen..I mean I understand why you need it but..

..are you mad!!? lol

I had a D830 with the 1680 x 1050 res and feared i would go blind using it for more than an hour.. 1920 x 1200 ..you're a braver man than I

The colour reproduction and contrast on mine was poor to say the least.. Green was grey, black was grey, blue was grey ..so glad it wasn't actually mine lol

 

Higher res = more pixels = easier on eyes for same font size. You can always scale up the font size in Vista.

 

For a minute there I thought the review was incomplete only to realize later that there's a second page =). Btw, what is that white thing around your Macbook Pro's touchpad?

Nice review. Mabuhay!

 

My old XP laptop had WUXGA screen. I just changed the DPI settings to make things just a smidge larger, and the result was damn near perfect.

Nothing wrong with WUXGA in my book. I personally would never get anything less than WSXGA, I like the desktop space it affords, especially when editing large photo's.

 

Good review
+Rep

 

I love detailed reviews like this, we get to see an in depth look at the system. To someone looking for a product in which they will invest a considerable sum of money, the more details about the product's pros and cons the better.

 

me too so detailed i love it they should make him chief reviewer(or something) for this

 

Wish all the reviews were like that

That price is a bit odd though. Similarly priced system in australia is $2800AUD which is the same price for an entry level MBP. And that MBP is $1999 in the states, so there is a $700 price difference.

Dell is usually cheaper in the US as well.

 

Is there some kind of reward for "best review" or something ? I'd vote for freefisheater

 

What a review! +rep! (Now, go get some physical exercise, lol!)

 

Wow, very detailed and informative review . . .

BTW, congrats on your new lappy!

 

I wasn't aware of the release roadmap for the T61s. At the time I was making my decisions, in fact, the T61t was just about to come out. And, as I said, I had a shipping date deadline to make. So the next closest option was the apparently EOL'd Z61m/p.

If I'd had the luxury of time, I might have waited for the T61p. Who knows, though? I might sell this off later this year and get it after all. We'll see.

 

In hindsight, I certainly believe I could have gotten a better system outside of Dell for the price I paid. On the other hand, all the accessories and additional services (the 4-year Gold warranty) were really what pushed me over the edge.

Another reason I was willing to pay what I did - when I had similar specs quoted for me by the local authorized distributor, the quote they ended up giving me exceeded my configurator quote by at least 500USD. So in THAT sense, I still feel like I saved a quite a bit.

 

In all honesty, I didn't want to get an HD optical drive. I have no intention of paying ridiculous amounts of money for a high definition movie player on my laptop (and no, I don't need to back up THAT much data to disc). On top of that, I didn't want to replace my already large existing DVD collection with BD or HD-DVD when neither of them is looking to become the next standard yet.

AND, by that time I will have sold this and moved on to my next system - I don't intend to keep this for longer than two to three years.

Oh, and the reason I got the accessories was that they're at least 20 - 30% cheaper from Dell versus the common retail price here in Manila.

 

The leakage only really annoys me between boot screens, blank screensavers, and whenever I have a dark scene in games or movies. That's when I'm reminded of the leakage, and wish I'd turned away - if only to preserve my blissful memory loss.

 

Hahaha! Yeah, I was a bit apprehensive at first, right after I confirmed my order. But then I realized that after a year of 1680x1050, it was time to move up in the world.

 

Mabuhay! The white thing is a soft rubberized wrist-rest and dirt protector. The downside is, now it is the one attracting dust and dirt. Oh well.

 

I should really check my credit card bill again, as well as the invoice. Lemme scrounge that e-mail up. And see if I can get back to you guys on this.

 

I thought it was something that addresses palm rest heat issues (maybe it does?). That white thing kinda sticks out of your photos like a sore thumb
I'm also from Manila and my Dell came with an international warranty too. I was thinking that it's pretty useless here until I read something you said about " Parts only services ". Care to enlighten me on this? I thought I had to go to some nearby country that honors this warranty like Singapore, Malaysia or Hong Kong should I need on-site service or parts.

 

Sorry. I didn't know the price included the accessories. With all the accessories the price seems better but i still don't know if the accessories are worth nearly 700USD.

But then again it is a nice laptop so just enjoy it. 700 bucks over 3 years of usage is negligible.

 

Nice review, I have I D830 myself with the same configuration (only with an extra battery, which gives it 6.5 hours of battery life with everything switched on). Indeed it's not fit for perfomance gaming BUT I had allready figured out that the D830 and the Precision M4300 are similar from the outside. What seems to be the case (and this struck me with amasement); the D830 with a 140NVS and the M4300 with the 360M are the same! Difference exists only in software (the 140NVS has 256Meg, the 360M has 256Meg and 256 shared meg plus some higher clockspeeds). Gaming performance also doesn't differ very much between these cards, while you do get less energy consumption (10W VS 17W). There are even some threads about it here on notebookreview;

(I'm too lazy to search for those again )

 

Very nice, comprehensive review!

In my opinion, I have very little regard for Dell for the fact that they try to maximize as much profit as possible while dropping quality (as apparent on their poor, poor issues with many, many things from batteries to paint to touchpads to LCD screens to AC power adapters to the plastics used). As the reviewer pointed out, Dell used a screen from a vendor that's unheard of. It's not wrong to try to make a profit, but Dell is the far, far extreme where they dime and nickel you as much as possible.

 

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the compliments and reps. I try. I just figured, I had a lot of quality reviews to live up to.

 

Hahaha! Yeah, I really should. I've been spending WAY too much time in front of this system. Between my computer and my son... who has time to go out and exercise anymore? )

 

It really does stick out, doesn't it? I can safely say it also helps block some of the heat that the MBP seems to steam out from the wrist rest area.

The Parts-Only warranty means that you can replace various components of your system at no cost for the parts themselves, but - according to Dell, Philippines (only a satellite office, don't get your hopes up), there will still be a variable diagnostic or labor fee. In my case, every unique incident I brought it in for would set me back 1,500PhP (about 35USD). There are no actual parts in the Philippines, so if they need to replace one for you they have to order it from Malaysia. I'm trying to have this done with my motherboard and video card now, and I'm just waiting for them to get back to me on the arrival of the parts. Unfortunately, I contacted them about it FOUR WEEKS AGO. That also included my issue with the surge protector, as well as an order for extra RAM and a 160GB HDD.

To clarify, I only asked to be quoted for those last two parts out of curiosity. I know there are a TON of places here where I can get my parts for dirt cheap (PC Gilmore, for instance, gets me 2GB of RAM for about 100USD.)

Bear in mind, however, that the international warranty in the Philippines only honors the Latitude and XPS lines. If you got either a Vostro or an Inspiron, I'm afraid you might be out of luck. I would suggest giving them a call and wrangling some service out of 'em. But be sure you know what you want done and keep track of your serial, registration and activation numbers for all your software. When I had mine formatted and reinstalled, they used different licenses and serial numbers for both my Windows and my MS Office. Strange, because I left all my installation discs with them.

--------
To contact the local Authorized Service Provider (Micro-D International), look for Romy Redondo at +639285020713 or +639274973002.

Micro-D International, Inc.
6th Floor, Peninsula Court Building
8735 Paseo de Roxas cor. Makati Avenue,
Mkt City 1226,
Philippines.
Tel : 63-2-812 2124 / 5124
Fax : 63-2-893 7377
Contact : Ms Cynthia H. Veloria - President/CEO ([email protected])
* Mobile : 63-917-873 2202

Or you can try:

Accent Micro Technologies, Inc [100224] - Jessie Neoh ( DASP Certified )
Suite 1408, 14th Floor Antel Global Corporate Center Julia Vargas Ave.,
Ortigas Center Pasig City,
Metro Manila 1600 Philippines.
Tel : +632-636 3563
Fax : +632-636 3564
Contact : Mr Allyxon Cua - President ( [email protected] )
* Mobile : 63-917-826 0937

Finally, in case you have any other questions, the actual head office is:

Philippines Representative Office
4/F, 1800 Eastwood Avenue Bldg., Eastwood City Cyberpark,
188 E. Rodriguez Ave., Bagumbayan, Quezon City,
Philippines. 1100
1100 Director & Country Manager: Barry Bunyi
Phone: +632 706 8000

 

Thanks, Macpod. As I said earlier, when I added up the total cost of the accessories, the total price (after currency conversion) came out cheaper than local retailers by around 20-30%. And the 2,700 includes the system, all the software and accessories, the four year warranties and taxes and shipping. And I went over the quote I received from the local Dell distributor again. If I bought it from them, I'd have spent WELL over 600USD more, for a system with decidedly MUCH lower specs (i.e., 3,400USD for the D830 at 2.0GHz C2D 800MHz, 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD, WSXGA+ and only the mouse and the surge protector as my quoted accessories.) What a rip-off.

 

Actually, the NVS140M allows you to use up to 1GB for video memory (for systems with 2GB of installed RAM). 256 on-board, and then up to 768MB from system memory. I imagine the 360M will let you do the same. All of this only applies in Vista, however. Any idea, however, on the performance ratings of the 360M? I was wondering how much more powerful it was, and how the gaming experience will differ.

Incidentally, I'm able to run Company of Heroes at 1440x900 with all the effects either at medium or low, with no anti-aliasing. And even at those settings it's not silky smooth.

 

Thanks you! The screen in my system is labeled SEC - for Seiko-Epson Corporation (or Samsung Electronics Corporation, depending on who you ask.) I have to agree with you on the quality issue, however. As you can see, I found a lot of issues with the build quality ranging from loose pieces to wiggling catches and so on. For the system you get, it's in the neighborhood of a fair price. Where I find they don't give you what you pay for is the WAY your high-priced system is actually put together. So I have to agree with you there.

 

@freefisheater

Well the difference should be reflected by the higher clock I guess. From what is known the two cards have the same base meme, same chipcet. So since the 360M clocks are somewhere on the interwebs than you should be able to clock the 140NVS to the same clockspeed. (With some laptopvideotogo drivers you can OC, they just put out some new ones which i'm going to try in just a moment...). Off course, these speeds are not 17/10=1,7 as high... a little extra clock speed quickly means a lot more heat.

 

Man, the longest review and most pictures I have seen. Very good review.

The screen brightness is a big big disappointment!

The same story when I had the D620 last year.

 

What would I be using to overclock it, then? Rivatuner? And is the extra performance going to be worth the extra heat? And what sort of performance boost can I expect? Would I be able to play Quake 4 at 1680x1050 with all options on medium? Or on maximum? Hehehe.

And at any OC settings, will I immediately be needing a laptop cooler?

 

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3931

that page is virus spyware infested. If you click any of the picture-thumbnail links...
Michael Arcilla, the picture hosting site you used, i believe 'xs.to' or what ever it is. even the name sounds suspicious is virus /spyware infested. the moment i clicked on those picture thunbnails to view the larger picture, norton internet security 2008 on win vista warned me that it had blocked an intrusion attack on my system.

so, Michael Arcilla, i urge you to take down all the picture thumbnails on the 'Dell Latitude D830 User Review' page down before you infest more unsuspecting webpage viewers.

 

Oh wow. Are you serious? I'm so sorry! I just found the hosting site as used by one or a few other reviewers here, and assumed it was safe. Can you suggest any other place I can host the pictures on? I'll get in touch with Andrew immediately.

 

no virus or spyware for me. I have norton as well....

 

if this is any proof!!!

do u have win vista and which norton software do you have?
is it just the antivirus or the whole package - internet security?

freefisheater you can use allyoucanupload.com

 

Or flickr.com i find that to be excellent

I have norton antivirus 2006 and im running XP pro SP2. no internet securities. Does this mean norton antivirus 2006 is useless?

 

Strange. I have Avast!, AVG, McAfee Security Center, SpyBot S&D, and Nod32, yet none of them have popped up any warnings with the site either.

 

@freefisheater

Well, that is one of the utils you can use. As I mentioned before, the 360M and 140NVS don't differ too mucht in gaming performance. So the extra performance is probably marginal. This has to do with the small memory bandwith of this specific chipset. While for CAD applications a faster core clock would be nice, in games it's going to matter little since they make far more use of textures.

I'd say, just enjoy the good but not great performance combined with good battery life, a great screen and a solid built. I you wanted video performace, you should have bought another laptop. Oh BTW. the standard drivers are quite bad. The last drivers released by laptopvideotogo (see the news) work without modding, they are allready faster than Dell's own initial release.