dell latitude d830 laptop review

Overview

The Dell Latitude D830 is the successor to the Latitude D820 (apple a1175), a mid sized business notebook with a 15.4" screen and the new Santa Rosa platform. Weighing in at nearly six pounds it tips the scales at the upper end of the thin-and-light category. Pricing as of this writing starts at $899, and like most Dell notebooks there are plenty of customization options available.

My Latitude D830 is configured as such:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, 2.00GHz


• 15.4 inch Wide Screen WUXGA LCD


• 2.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 2 DIMM


• 256MB NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M


• 80GB Hard Drive 9.5MM 7200RPM


• 90W AC Adapter


• 8X DVD+/-RW w/ Roxio Creator and Cyberlink


• Intel 4965 WLAN (802.11a/g/n)


• 9-Cell/85 WHr Primary Battery


• 6-Cell/48-WHr Modular Battery


• Vista Business, with media English


• Dimensions are 1.39" x 14.2" x 10.34"


• Weight is 6.5lbs with 9-cell battery and optical drive

Reason for Buying

When I began looking for a laptop (dell latitude d620 battery )nearly a month ago my primary objective was to find a solid machine that would last me through four years of college. My last notebook was an old Inspiron 500m which I deemed sufficiently thin-and-light for heavy travel and light tasks so I began looking into a larger, more powerful machine though I did not want a full-out desktop replacement. As this notebook would also be a graduation gift, price was not an object and I wanted something that was really something!

Being a long time Dell user, my initial inclination was towards a Dell, but I looked into machines of other brands as well. HP (dell latitude d820 battery )and Asus dropped out early on due to cosmetic preferences, but I put some consideration on the 14 and 15 inch Lenovo T60 series.

A few of my friends own older Thinkpad models and have nothing but praise for them. Indeed, Lenovo is known for superior build quality though typically at a price. By all means the T60 is a beautiful machine, but I was put off by a couple of small details. My biggest qualm is that I cannot stand having a battery stick out. Apparently that seems to be the current trend with a lot of smaller machines sporting bigger batteries and the 14-inch T60 was no exception. I wasn't terribly fond of the port configuration either, particularly the positioning of display and telecom ports on the side of the chassis and the lack of an S-video output. The small touchpad and some very minor aesthetic points also put me off. The 15 inch T60 was a bit better but it still lacked an s-video output and was a tad bit too heavy.

Subsequently I went to Dell. After deciding against Inspiron and XPS notebooks - I hated those big white Inspiron bumpers and there isn't a 14 or 15 inch XPS - my choices came down to the Latitude D630, D830 and Precision M65. The D630 was the thin-and-light of the group but suffered from the same issue as the 14 inch T60 in that the battery stuck out and it was missing an S-video port. Reviews I read about the D630 (dell xps m1530 battery )also mentioned poor sound and a loose battery. The D830 addressed most of my concerns with the D630 but I fretted over the weight of a 15 inch notebook. After changing my mind several times, the D830 finally won me over.

Shopping

After deciding on a machine I poked around the Internet for coupons and discounts, though I did not find many for the Latitude line. I did discover that Dell (dell latitude d600 battery )was offering $400 off the price of each Latitude configured over $1,600 and figured it wouldn't get much better than that. Dell's customization and order process is very straightforward and I made sure to spend plenty of time agonizing over choices like integrated versus discrete graphics or 9-cell versus 6-cell batteries. All in all it was a smooth and pleasant shopping experience. The machine arrived just over a week after I ordered it.

First Impression

The computer shipped with everything shown here. The container was divided into two sections, a cardboard container for the power supply, media bay battery, resource disks and documentation and a styrofoam crate for the actual computer. I was actually somewhat surprised that the notebook came with printed documentation; the last few Dell machines my family bought came with a short pamphlet telling you how to plug in the computer in several different languages.

When I first pulled the D830 out of its protective envelope boy was I impressed. Things have changed since the days of my 500m. I expected the build quality to be good, but it was unexpectedly good. It's really quite solid. It's also very pleasant to look at it; I think the rather subdued appearance is much nicer than the flashy white-bumper Inspiron.

When I first opened up the machine I found the hinges quite stiff with pretty much no play. The outer shell of the notebook is made of a magnesium alloy though the inner surfaces are still made of plastic. The chassis has no flex whatsoever; I can pick it up by a corner without a problem. Unfortunately though there is a bit of flex in the screen and palmrest, but it is much less than that of older Dell machines. The latch is a bit loose but the travel is very small. The overall build quality might not be on par with that of the Thinkpad series but it is getting close.

Like I said before, I'm very fond of the somewhat simplistic Latitude design. Save for the small curves that make up the corners of the machine the lines of the laptop (ibm thinkpad t60 battery )are straight and parallel forming a nearly rectangular solid. I think this gives it a more rugged and balanced appearance than wedge shaped notebooks which seem to be appearing more and more these days. The two tone color scheme also contributes to the smart appearance of a business laptop.

Input Devices

The keyboard looks like a typical Dell keyboard; it's very similar in appearance to the keyboard on my 500m (dell inspiron 1720 battery ). I found that the keyboard is generally more pleasant to use; the keys have a slightly greater travel and a greater amount of feedback as well. There isn't any flex in the keyboard as far as I can tell, though I am not a terribly hard typist. Overall it's a decent keyboard, good, but nothing special.

The touchpad feels the same as the one on my 500m(dell KD476). It's responsive and easy to use, but again, nothing terribly special. I really like the buttons under the touchpad. Instead of having a short, hard click the D830 has buttons that have a longer, softer click to them which I just find to be rather nice. The same can be said for the power button and media buttons.

I don't use a pointing stick very often; in fact there isn't one on my 500m (Dell gd761), but I found it to be less responsive than the touchpad and harder to use. I tended to overshoot where I was aiming much of the time. It may just be because I don't have much experience with the trackpoint. The buttons for the trackpoint are the same as those for the touchpad with that same long, soft click.

I don't like having a bunch of multimedia buttons cluttering up the front of my computer, so I am glad that the D830 only has three. There are three buttons to control the speaker volume: higher, lower and mute.

Sound

One of the reasons I turned down the D630 was a that speaker quality was reported to be pretty bad. I usually use headphones when listening to movies or music but I'd like to have a decent set of speakers for the rare times I don't. That being said, the speakers on the D830 (12" 15" 17" apple powerbook g4 battery )are pretty good as far as laptop speakers go. Being set on the sides of the keyboard means they are quite clear when I am sitting at machine and the sound carries itself pretty well even across the length of a living room. The sound does start getting fuzzy at really high volumes, but my ears usually start to ring before it gets to that point.

Processor and Graphics

In high school I did quite a bit of CAD work on my 500m for my school's robotics team. Autodesk Inventor 8 took more than a minute to load. Inventor 10 took twice that and ran at a crawl once it started. It was rather frustrating. As I would be majoring in engineering in college, I figured I could use a discrete graphics solution which led me to select the NVS 140 GPU as I read that it was optimized for "business" applications such as CAD. I have not done anything GPU intensive since purchasing this machine so I'm not certain about the real world performance of the NVS 140.

The single core AMD Barton processor in my desktop is clocked at 2.3GHz and I have not known it to really struggle with anything I threw at it. Subsequently I did not think I'd need the fastest processor I could get and went with the 2.0 GHz Intel T7300 because it was a nice round number. Recently I needed to do a fair amount of video encoding and I split the task between the D830 (dell latitude d600 battery )and my desktop. I daresay I was somewhat surprised as to how much faster the T7300 was compared to the older AMD processor. Encoding a certain video file was nearly twice as fast on the D830. I guess there's no doubt that multiple cores are the wave of the future.

Operating System and Software

I'll come right out and say that I'm not very fond of Vista. I'm even less fond of the fact that Microsoft really isn't giving me a choice as to what OS I want to use. I bought my D830 with Vista in the event that I would be forced to upgrade in the near future but with the intention of using XP until then. I chose Vista Business because it is supposed to be the Vista equivalent of XP Pro which I have been happily using for a long time.

Vista came preinstalled along with Roxio Creator and Cyberlink, neither of which I need or use.

While waiting for my D830 I learned that Dell's stock drivers for the NVS 140 (15" 17" apple macbook pro battery )were rather poor. Indeed, there was a noticeable amount of lag every couple seconds when opening and closing tabs or moving windows around. It was recommended that I should use Nvidia's Forceware drivers in place of the stock drivers, so I looked around for a compatible version. Revision 160.05 did not officially supporting the NVS 140, but it definitely improved my system's graphical performance. It was not free of problems though; I noticed that standby stopped working properly after the driver update and I'm sure there were bugs that I did not notice.

Afterwards Vista ran quite smoothly. A cold boot took just under a minute.

Installing a fresh copy of XP was a pain. My XP installation CD cannot recognize SATA drivers. I had to switch the HDD controller to ATA mode, install the OS, install the SATA drivers and switch the HDD controller back to its default setting. Dell's resource CD only included drivers for Vista so I downloaded XP drivers for the D830 (dell xps m1730 battery )from Dell's technical support site. Some of these XP drivers did not want to work with my machine and I had to use the corresponding Vista drivers. All in all the installation process took a full morning, but I eventually got the system in working order with Windows XP.

Heat and Noise

When the laptop is idling it is very quiet. I can only hear it if I try to. When going about my normal business, it's very easy to ignore. Under a heavy load such as video encoding or benchmarking, the fan will start running at higher speeds. At this point a significant amount of noise is generated, but I believe it is from the moving air rather than the fan itself. Also, the optical drive makes a bit of noise when it is running, though that is pretty typical for optical drives in general.

When the laptop is idling it is also quite cool. The lower half of the keyboard and palmrest stays at room temperature while the upper half just gets a tad bit warmer. Under a heavy load the upper half will heat up a noticeable amount, but the fan does a good job of keeping the temps at a reasonable level. The bottom of the laptop and the air coming out the back can also get pretty warm under these conditions.

Battery Life

I did a simple test to emulate light use of the D830 under battery power. I turned the screen down to half brightness and let windows media player play music at a relatively low volume. This test was also done under the default Vista setup, prior to the installation of ForceWare drivers.

The 9-cell primary on its own reached 10% in a bit under three hours. Together with the media bay battery it reached 10% in just over four and a half hours.

Considering that my 500m could do three and a half hours on its one primary battery, I was a bit disappointed with the battery life at first, especially when owners of D620s and D630s were claiming battery lives of up to five hours. But considering I have a 15 inch WUXGA screen and discrete graphics I guess a drop in battery life is expected.