the recall trouble of Toyota

Toyota’s Prius hybrid was Japan’s top-selling car in March for an 11th straight month despite global recall woes of Dell C1295 battery , an industry group said Tuesday.”The recall woes did not appear to dent demand for the Prius. Despite the recall trouble, the automaker cannot keep up with surging demand for the Prius,” said Toshiki Miyake, a spokesman for the association.

Consumers were choosing the Prius with the help of tax breaks and government subsidies for environmentally friendly vehicles, Miyake said.Toyota’s Prius was also the top-selling car in Japan in the fiscal year to March 2010, with sales quadrupling from a year earlier to 277,485 of Dell inspiron 1521 battery , the association said.

The Prius, now in its third generation since its 1997 introduction, is the best-selling gas-electric hybrid in the world, with a total of 1.7 million units sold worldwide of Dell inspiron e1505 battery , according to Toyota. It is so popular in Japan that it has a six-month waiting list.Rival Honda Motor Co.’s fuel-efficient FIT was in second place in March sales in Japan, with 23,076 units sold, the association said.

The FIT also was No. 2 for the fiscal year with sales of 173,154.Toyota has been fighting to regain its once-sterling reputation for quality after recalling more than 8 million vehicles worldwide of Dell GK479 , including more than 6 million in the U.S. alone, due to acceleration problems in multiple models and braking shortcomings in the Prius.

In Washington, the U.S. government accused Toyota of hiding a “dangerous defect on Dell latitude d420 battery ” and proposed a record $16.4 million fine Monday for failing to quickly alert regulators to safety problems.

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How to charge your laptop battery properly?

During the the process of notebook using, we need no to deliberately charge the Inspiron 6400 Battery to 100% state or fully discharged laptop battery to automatic shutdown protecting. The correct way is that charge the battery in 20% state and stop charging in 98% . If the machine has the power calibration procedure, when the battery standard-by time significantly reduced. Then calibrate the battery in time to active the protection circuit performance.

For early notebook batteries as Dell XPS M1730 Battery (Ni-MH Ni-MH or Ni-Cd Ni-Cd), really need to fully charge and discharge in order to maintain good battery capacity. But for the lithium battery is not necessary even it may damage the battery.

In fact the lithium batteries has a little memory effect. The lithium VGP-BPL9 battery materials is very sensitive to the conditions as temperature, the use of frequency and so on. The battery will be aging after used for some period time (standby time reduced). The natural wear and tear is an important reason, and inadequate maintenance is another important reason.

A well-designed lithium batteries have a very good protection circuit to prevent excessive charge and discharge.As over-charging and discharging of the Sony VGP-BPL8A battery will be the rapid reduction activity. Under the protection of protection circuit, the user fully charge and discharge the battery several times, in fact, impossible to achieve had “full” level.

Sometimes WINDOWS show that ThinkPad T61 Battery capacity is 20% or more, you can use 30 minutes. But after used 10 minutes or less the machine suddenly automatically shut down. The reason is that the battery has been aging, the battery protection circuit can not monitors the battery real capacity. In the normal battery depletion, the protection circuit original parameters have been unable to properly reflect the actual situation of the battery

So power calibration procedure is to correct the benchmark protection circuit parameters to accurately reflect the actual capacity of the IBM ThinkPad R61 Battery. This correction process will often take two or three complete charge and discharge. As previously mentioned, fully charge and discharge will reduce the battery activity. It is not frequently used, usually once a month.

The article Via laptop battery blog

Notebook battery fully charge and discharge error

Notebook computer equipped with the original battery, after a period of time after use, there will inevitably be the case of standby time. Some users said: “depth with repeated charge-discharge method, be able to resume the performance of the battery, thereby extending the battery life.

To a correct understanding of this issue, start a notebook about the type of Sony battery used. As we all know, in 1995, before the production of notebook computers are basically used to power nickel-cadmium batteries. In the use of such batteries, if not the correct way of charging and discharging, the battery will have a “memory effect”, thereby reducing the battery’s actual capacity, the elimination of this “memory effect” is the best way to repeatedly charge and discharge depth manner. With the emergence of nickel-hydrogen batteries, battery capacity has improved significantly, but the “memory effect” did not completely eliminate the shortcomings.

In recent years, lithium-ion batteries in notebook computers has been rapidly increasing, largely as a result of lithium-ion batteries have been the elimination of the “memory effect” problem, it is used repeatedly to restore the depth of Dell inspiron 1545 battery charge-discharge performance of the method is not applied. But why lithium-ion battery capacity or the will to reduce the problem? Have a fundamental reason for this situation is used in notebook computers and the original lithium-ion battery in the built-in battery management systems.

Battery Management: At present, in notebook computers, almost all adopted the “battery management” and “charge-discharge control” of two chip-level management systems. The “battery management chip” placed in the notebook computer itself, the chip registers in the memory of the computer used in the capacity of lithium-ion Inspiron 1545 battery, operating temperature, ID serial number, charge-discharge state, the cumulative number of charge-discharge and other important information. In the use of these data, the need to constantly refresh the actual situation. The battery built-in “chip control charge and discharge” the most important role is to monitor and control the battery charge and discharge the entire process and be documented.

Charge: Lithium-ion rechargeable battery the whole process is divided into “fast charge constant-current” and “reduced charge constant current” two stages. The so-called “constant current fast charge” means charge has just begun, the charge current and charge voltage to follow a fixed battery terminal voltage gradually increased until they reach their nominal voltage of the charging method. When the inspiron 630m battery terminal voltage has reached the standard value, the controller will automatically turn into “reduced charge constant current” phase, when the charging voltage will no longer continue to rise, while the charge current to follow the battery capacity is rising gradually diminishing, and eventually reach zero, so they all completed a KD476 GD761 battery charging process.

At the same time, the charge generated by the process of charging voltage, current and time data curves will be recorded in the VGP-BPS8 battery’s “charge-discharge control chip” of the memory. “Battery management chip” is through access to th

ese data, calculated by the sample data such as battery capacity, which is, in Battery Information in numerical Wh read.

Fixed: After repeated charging and discharging the Dell Inspiron 1520 Battery after use, its built-in chip in the charge-discharge data will of course be changed. If at this time “battery management chip” has no chance to re-read the newer, more complete data, it calculated the battery capacity will not be accurate of course, to the user the feeling seems to be reducing the capacity of the Dell Latitude D820 Battery, and the fact that the actual capacity of the battery has not really reduced. Some bring their own brand of rechargeable laptop management software working principle, the process is in charge refresh “charge-discharge control chip” memory of the data, thus ensuring the “battery management chips,” the correctness of calculations.

A close look if you have the use of laptop manuals, will be found that “a month in the use of computer time, should make a full fujitsu battery charge and discharge operation” note. Its main purpose is to use the depth of charge and discharge the way to amend the charge and discharge control chip register data in the curve so that the battery charge control and battery nominal capacity and the actual situation, as a result the correct value of the battery capacity.

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Electric cars

Electric cars can not be a 2020 high-volume mainstream product, according to Boston Consulting Group, recently wrote an article about car laptop battery, and through Dave Guilford Automotive News written by a published study.

The main reason is the hybrid did not become widespread dissemination is due to the huge cost of the Dell Inspiron 6400 Battery. In the hybrid vehicle lithium-ion battery current price is 1,000 yuan to 1,200 yuan per kilowatt-hour. Vehicle manufacturers can not achieve their long-term costs per kilowatt-hour objective of 250 hours.

Today’s prices mean that the present 20 million kilowatt hours of electric car Dell Latitude D620 Battery cost about 20,000 yuan. While the prices may drop to 8,000 by 2020 will not be low. Consumers want to have a three-year cost recovery period to purchase an electric compared to internal combustion engines, Mosquet said.

In 2020, the annual report, 26 percent, in the main vehicles sold in developed markets will have some form of Dell XPS M1730 Battery power. This would translate into about 14 million.

However, the study is expected, the vast majority – about 110,000 – will be the sale of hybrids only about 1.5 million electric vehicles annually. Some on-board rechargeable Dell Inspiron E1505 Battery means to account for another 1.5 million electric vehicles, the report said.

Mosquet said that there may be legitimate reasons, such as development covers the sharp rise in oil prices, the possibility of electric vehicles. As well as the electric part of the annual 1.5 million units can be used for dell inspiron 1520 battery manufacturers and a number of car manufacturers profitable, he said.

But Mosquet said that car manufacturers should be cautious: “We are now saying is be careful.”

The report assumes that the cost of batteries and electric in hybrid electric vehicles purchase price. It does not include the Dell Inspiron E1405 Battery may actually be leased, often to exchange the possibility of this has been a variety of businesses, including a better place to propose.

What’s wrong with my Compaq Evo N610c ?

Recently,I donn’t know why my Compaq Evo N610C Battery struck. So I tried to search through google for any specific answers to my problem but to no avail. I reiterate thatI’d appreciate any suggestions on how to get my Battery Pack operating correctly again.This is going to be a very long post so please bare with me. I’ll start from the top.

I bought a Refurbished Compaq Evo N610c Laptop about 6 months ago,of course including the stupid Compaq N610C battery. It was working fine until about a month ago when I noticed that the AC Adapter cable started to make a funny noise whenever I plugged it in. After having a closer look at the AC Adapter, I found that there was a crack in the middle of the power pack which is exactly where the noise was coming from. But by the time I noticed that there was something wrong with the AC Adapter, the laptop would not turn on from the mains or the battery.

So I went and bought a replacement AC Adapter from batterymag.co.uk. It arived here and the laptop now started to work from the mains again. But now, it will not turn on from the battery. This is now my next problem.

The new AC Adapter recognises and charges the battery – the orange light turns on when I connect the AC Adapter to the mains and the vgp-bps13 is connected to the Laptop. However, whenever I try to turn the Laptop on from the Battery (without the AC Adapter connected), it makes a very weird and loud noise. It will boot up Windows from the battery and then 5 minutes later, the Laptop just turns off by itself.

I’ve had a look at the Control Panel under Power Options in Windows and it says there that the battery is 100% charged but the current power source is “AC power”. This doesn’t make sense because the AC Adapter is not connected to the Laptop and it’s not connected to a mains socket.

Now I’m thnking that maybe my Battery is the problem. So I went and bought a spare Battery from laptopbatterymag.com. It arrived here, I tried it and noticed similar erratic bahaviour. It would turn on from the battery, it doesn’t make any noise but the Laptop turns off by itself after about 15 minutes of continous use. And again during this time, Windows shows the battery as 100% charged and the current power source as ‘AC Power’. The AC Adapter is not even connected to the Laptop or the mains so I can’t see why it’s thinking that the Battery power is the AC Power.

What am I supposed to do now? Is there something wrong with my laptop? Is there anything at all that I can do to fix this myself? Like cleaning the battery contacts or is there something more sinister going on here?


I’m at a loss at what to do next and I would greatly appreciate your help with this.I have a bit of experience with PC building so if it’s just a case of taking the old one out and putting the new one in then that shouldn’t be a problem. However, I can’t do any soldering – just haven’t got enough experience. I’m more familiar with cables and connectors.

Oh and if you’ve managed to get this far, many thanks for reading the entire post.

 

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The mobile phone news

China Mobile Dell XPS M1730 Battery Communications Association Xie Linzhen, vice president, said China’s mobile phone industry, driven components industry to flourish. In 2006 we have statistics, in China’s domestic consumption of components production in more than 200 billion the total output value of more than 100 billion yuan, which is an explosive growth, indicating that China has become the world’s largest component of marketing power, China components industry will be rapid growth.

In this exhibition, the reporter saw mobile devices continues to meet the rising demands of mobile phone features, functionality, integration, cost-effective in areas such as comprehensive a new supply trend also changed.Board to board connectors and high-frequency connectors have applications with Dell Inspiron E1405 Battery.

As mobile phone components, one of the important components of high-end connectors, has always been a Tyco, AMP, MOLEX and other foreign manufacturers in the world. The exhibition, the reporter saw, Shanghai Co., Ltd. has developed FAF board to board connectors, and high-frequency connectors, which belong to the high-end connectors. Song of peace officers show presentation board to board connectors phone will need an average of 2. Board to board connectors in the field, there were only a few companies are doing, but the quality is not high. Through the precision control of the company, technology, materials innovation, achieved its product advantages: First, thin, and a height of 1.5mm, the second half will develop 0.9mm connector. Second, the spacing is small, as the 0.4mm, is now patented. The high-frequency connector is mainly used for Bluetooth and other wireless-enabled mobile phones. At present these two connectors have been applied to a number of mobile phone brands Dell Latitude D420 Battery.

Small Display Devices supply will become more tense

In the mobile phone display area, vgp-bps9/b Exhibition staff Yuan Lin-Jie, at present mobile phone with 2.0-inch screen, 2.4-inch, 2.8-inch mainstream, the future will be 3.2 inches based. Pegasus has been to invest in Shanghai to build the first 4.5-generation TFT-LCD production line, mainly producing small and medium size TFT-LCD, for mobile terminals, digital cameras, automotive displays, portable DVD, handheld computers and other products, while market demand for these products are rapid growth. Data show that in 2004 sales of small and medium size TFT-LCD size of 150 billion U.S. dollars in 2010 is expected to reach 26 billion U.S. dollars can be a compound rate of nearly 20% sony vgp-bps9/b battery. He also told reporters that as the market for 42-inch, and Windows Vista in 22-inch, 26-inch display growth in demand, supply small-size display devices will become more tense. Furthermore, the current driver IC market to Japan, South Korea and my Taiwanese manufacturer, the Pegasus will take into account the future development of driver IC.

The laptop 6 mainly hardware problem and prevention Methods

Ask the guys who repaired their notebooks around you, the motherboard issues may be the most commen problem of Dell Latitude D410 Battery. The author’s first notebook also dead as the motherboard problem. General board problems reasuly the machine unbootable. Motherboard problems usually cases short-circuit of IC (integrated circuit).

We usually should change the motherboard when it is broken. The motherboard prices accounted for 1/4 of the laptop Dell Latitude D610 Battery price, so the motherboard problem is the most expensive problem. We need to take attention that do not let leak fluid into the motherboard (we often do this). Do not refresh the BIOS if neednot. In addition, the motherboard is the breakdown by high voltage also happened frequently. If in the electricity peak or just to restore the electricity blackouts, during lightning storm, I propose to use Dell Latitude D410 Battery-powered, do not access home electricity.

2: Hard Disk

The laptop hard drive is more unbreakable than PC hard drive, but they are still afraid of falling repeatedly. Take a look at the label that prompt us to do not throw it. Why? The notebook hard disk is smaller than PC, but the principle is the same, and also due to the complex composition of electronic components. Although the manufacturers optimize the Dell Latitude D520 Battery laptop hard drive break quality. Because of its own composition, it is fear of shock. Remind you, in the bumpy transport, do not use notebook. Be careful not to fall to the ground when place your notebook on the table. As the laptop hard drive is cheap, the information inside is priceless.

3: LCD Screen

LCD is a relatively weak and fragile product of Dell Latitude D630 Battery. LCD mainly make of the glass and liquid crystal, tube composition that are fragile parts. The LCD under organic cover protection, but the protection is very limited. Do not place heavy objects on the LCD, or it would fracture the glass layer. Pay attention Do not let the books hit a hard object. When accidentally dropped on the floor, Dell Latitude D830 Battery LCD is also often bear the brunt. The large LCD value is also a quarter of machine, and it is difficult to repair it but buy a new one.

4: Strings parallel interface

These interfaces do not support hot swap. It is easy to burn the string parallel when plug the USB port or other sevice in Dell Latitude D820 Battery power on. Even worse, resulting in short-circuit board scrap. Although changing string, parallel port is a not too expensive, it is troubleful. There may be someone would say: we are now almost not using the strings parallel port, let them go bad. But the notebooks for engineering debugging that can not lack of the two interfaces.

5: Touchpad

In Summer our hands are dirty and wet. Touch VGP-BPS2 Sony VGP-BPS2C pad with your fingers will make the coating above soon disappear, shorten the life of touchpad and keyboar. So we should wash and clean our hands before open the lapop?

6: CD-ROM

The CD-ROM broken are always caused by someone special love of watching DVD movie. We all know that the original Sony VGP-BPS2C Sony VGP-BPS2A notebook CD-ROM are 150 dollars or more. If always watching disc, your CD-ROM drive will die after one year. If you like watching movie, it is better to buy a DVD player. I just use my T40 combo CD-ROM to installing the software, burn backup, not do other things.

dell latitude d410 laptop review

The Dell Latitude D410 is a 12.1" screen portable business laptop. It shares some similarities with the ultra light Latitude X1, such as having the same 12.1" screen size and no built-in optical drive to keep weight down, but it is overall quite different and more of a cross between an ultraportable and thin-and-light workstation. With its optional 2.00GHz Pentium M processor (using the latest Intel Sonoma chipset), 512MB of RAM (upgradeable to 2GB), a full size keyboard featuring dual navigation and nice overall design and build, the Latitude D410 is an enticing portable laptop.

In the litter of refreshed Dell Latitude business laptops, the D410 (hp pavilion dv6000 battery)is the runt--but by no means is it meek. On the strength of its new Intel Sonoma parts, the updated Latitude D410 raced through CNET Labs' benchmarks, earning our fastest mobile performance score to date for an ultraportable. With a reinforced frame and new features such as a Trusted Platform Module chip, the Latitude D410 is a speedy, secure, and smartly designed notebook for executives.



At 1.3 inches thick, the Latitude D410 is slightly stockier than its predecessor, the D400 (dell latitude d410 battery). Otherwise, the two laptops are about the same size, measuring 11 inches wide and 9.4 inches deep. Weighing 3.9 pounds, the Latitude D410 still falls within the range of ultraportable laptops.

First of all let me say this is hands down the best looking Dell laptop I've used. I last used the Dell Latitude X1 and was quite impressed with the simple non-flashy design. But I really dig a bit of a darker look to a laptop, and the Dell D410 with its dark charcoal grey and silver finish is rather striking. It reminds me a bit of the Fujitsu LifeBook styling, which I like a lot. The dark finish and industrial looking fan vent also gives the D410 a bit of a muscular look, the Ford Mustang of notebooks if you will. The silver latch on the screen adds a nice finishing touch and professional look.

The build is sturdy, this notebook doesn't flex. The chassis uses a tri-metal blend of aluminum, magnesium and steel while the case shell is constructed of a very rigid plastic on the body and keyboard area. The lid is constructed of magnesium alloy that offers great protection of the screen and a great look as well. The screen hinges are sturdy, you won't get any wobble on the screen unless you're on one heck of a bumpy plane ride...or if you're like me and push the screen back and forward to test how much it wobbles, just to be picky. So the build is overall good, but then instead of using a nice flap over the PCMCIA slot Dell put a dummy piece of plastic in there as a dust protector when you're not using a card. This shouldn't be the case with a business notebook, that's a cheap finish and solution and it kind of ruins a perfect 10.0 on the overall build.

The layout of this notebook is rather odd in a few ways. The battery is located at the front of the notebook, this is a first for me. Here's the good thing though, the battery doesn't get very warm at all, and since it is located under the palm rest areas you won't get any warmth there. That's right folks, no complaints of "my right hand is getting sweaty because the palm rest is a 110 degrees". The back of the notebook is a different story, but I'll get that to later (see heat and noise section). When you have the extended life battery in it sticks out at the front. My first reaction was to think that's really dumb, and to be honest it does look a little odd to have a lip at the front of your notebook sticking out. But now I'm used to it I think it's a great area for providing extra support for the wrists and resting them while typing.

Another odd layout move is that the headphone jack is all the way at the back of the right hand side of the notebook. What a bad location, it's hard to fumble and find and you have to stretch the headphone cord all that much farther, plus there's no color coding between the headphone and microphone jack so it's hard to see which is which until you get used to it. Also, the number and size of air vents on this notebook is rather impressive, there's 5 total. On the Latitude X1 there are zero. But with a Pentium M 2.00GHz processor and the cramped nature of internals in an ultraportable it does require this number of vents, so the D410 certainly looks a lot more industrial than your average ultraportable.

Like with the desktop-replacement d810 and thin-an-light D610, Dell (dell latitude d820 battery)has made some satisfying enhancements to the D410's design. For one, the lid's been reinforced to better protect the screen. The keyboard has also been made sturdier, resulting in a more solid feel as your fingers strike the keys; as with many ultraportables, the D410's keys may be too small for some users. The decently sized touch pad and pointing stick each have two matching mouse buttons; unfortunately, the touch pad's mouse buttons are somewhat cramped. Helpful status lights show when Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are activated. Finally, the D410 has a double dose of security: a Trusted Platform Module chip, which sits on the motherboard and serves as a virtual storage locker for your data, and a dedicated slot for smart cards, which can carry clandestine information such as passwords.

The Dell D410 does a good job of providing a nice number of mainstream ports, but unfortunately we don't get FireWire (which is available in the X1), and we don't get any type of media card reader...which is a real shame. We do get 3 USB 2.0 ports, which is very generous for an ultraportable computer. I like the fact there's a PCMCIA card slot for accessory expansion, something the Latitude X1 lacks. Let's just take a tour around this notebook to see everything that's available in terms of ports.

The system offers an average number of connectors, with Ethernet, modem, two USB 2.0 ports, VGA output, and one PC Card slot, as well as headphone and microphone jacks. If you're looking for an ultraportable with more built-in connections, check out the Sony VAIO VGN-T150P/L. Dell also sells a $219 Media Base which adds a parallel, video, serial, Ethernet, and two more USB 2.0 ports, in addition to a headphone jack.



You won't find the Latitude D410 on retail shelves or Web sites, as Dell sells the system only through its own Web site and toll-free number. CNET's Latitude D410 series review includes a discussion of the various configurations.

The 2.0GHz Pentium M processor configured in this notebook doesn't just race past the 1.1GHz ULV processor in the Dell Latitude X1, it laps it. This notebook is in truth probably overpowered for the use of Office and web type applications. So your next question might be, well that's great, so I can use this thing as a gaming notebook right? Hmm, well you're still strapped with an intregrated graphics solution in the form of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (integrated graphics). If you have 512MB or more, the graphics solution will borrow up to 128MB of system memory, if you're under 512MB then it will only borrow 64MB. So I recommend boosting memory up to 1GB so it has plenty to share with graphics. Even then you're not going to be able to play Doom 3, but there are 3D games and almost any game that's 2-years old will run on this system. As far as using everyday applications, this notebook effortlessly runs those and makes it easy to keep multiple applications open for switching between (I'm guilty as charged for having 20 things open at once, and luckily the D410 doesn't mind this).

I mentioned before that the D410 was a champ in terms of the wrist rest area staying cool and comfortable. I also noted there were a lot of vents on this notebook, certainly more than typical on an ultraportable. The Dell X1 has no vents, it uses passive cooling. With a 2.0GHz processor, the insides of the D410 would melt without a fan and vents. And so while these vents do a good job of keeping the notebook cool where it counts (keyboard and wriste area), the underside at the back of the D410 does get toasty, especially if you're pushing the notebook. I was converting a bunch of wma files to iTunes format and after 30-minutes of that there was some serious heat buildup on the bottom, I certainly wouldn't have wanted the D410 in my lap at that point. Also, the temperature of the room environment plays a big role in the notebooks ability to cool, so keep that in mind. If this notebook is on a flat surface (not your lap or bed), in a cool room and is being used for typical business applications then heat buildup isn't a problem. But if room temperatures creep above 75 and you're blocking vents by having the notebook in your lap, all while maxing the 2.0GHz processor out at 100% CPU usage, then you might experiment with getting some bacon to sizzle on the notebook's bottom surface.

As far as noise goes, I'm a bad tester to go by, but for me it wasn't a problem. I'm always either listening to music or I have some kind of background noise to keep my sanity and that most certainly blocks any fan noise. Having said that, I can say this machine is definitely not as whisper quiet as the Inspiron X1 -- that thing was silent. You experience a low volume electrical whirrr noise as the notebook works to cool, but it's so quiet that if you put a pair of headphones (normal basic headphones) on without even playing music the noise is blocked (I just tried this, a spontaneous non-scientific experiment).

Like with the desktop-replacement D810 and thin-and-light D610 (dell inspiron b120 battery,dell inspiron b130 battery) , Dell has made some satisfying enhancements to the D410's design. For one, the lid's been reinforced to better protect the screen. The keyboard has also been made sturdier, resulting in a more solid feel as your fingers strike the keys; as with many ultraportables, the D410's keys may be too small for some users. The decently sized touch pad and pointing stick each have two matching mouse buttons; unfortunately, the touch pad's mouse buttons are somewhat cramped. Helpful status lights show when Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are activated. Finally, the D410 has a double dose of security: a Trusted Platform Module chip, which sits on the motherboard and serves as a virtual storage locker for your data, and a dedicated slot for smart cards, which can carry clandestine information such as passwords.



The system offers an average number of connectors, with Ethernet, modem, two USB 2.0 ports, VGA output, and one PC Card slot, as well as headphone and microphone jacks. If you're looking for an ultraportable with more built-in connections, check out the Sony VAIO VGN-T150P/L. Dell also sells a $219 Media Base which adds a parallel, video, serial, Ethernet, and two more USB 2.0 ports, in addition to a headphone jack.



You won't find the Latitude D410 on retail shelves or Web sites, as Dell sells the system only through its own Web site and toll-free number. CNET's Latitude D410 series review includes a discussion of the various configurations.



Though its $2,254 (as of April 2005) price is on the high side, our Latitude D410 test unit included a few standout components as well as some average parts. The unit featured a 2.0GHz Pentium M 760 processor, 512MB of 400MHz memory, an Intel 915GM chipset with an integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 900 engine that borrows up to 128MB of video RAM from the main memory, and a slow, 4,200rpm 40GB hard drive. Our test unit also included an external DVD/CD-RW drive that connects to the notebook via USB 2.0, as well as Intel's newest integrated 802.11a/b/g card.



In CNET Labs' tests, the Latitude D410 wrung every drop of speed from its Sonoma-class Pentium M processor and chipset, earning the best mobile performance score we've seen to date from a laptop of its size. The Latitude D410 surpassed other corporate and consumer ultraportables, such as the HP Compaq Business Notebook nc4010 and the Dell Inspiron 700m, by 9 percent or more, though both the nc4010 and the Inspiron 700m had slower processors and memory than the Latitude D410. Despite its exceptional performance in our tests, the Latitude D410 (and most of the other Sonoma-based laptops we've tested) did not deliver the explosive speed burst we'd hoped to see in Sonoma-based systems. The D410's 11.1V, 4,800mAh battery triumphed in our Labs' drain tests, lasting more than three and a half hours--at least 50 minutes longer than the nc4010's and 700m's much smaller cells.



Our Latitude D410 test unit shipped with a decent software package, including Windows XP Professional and Dell's OpenManage, a program that lets a company's IT manager monitor system stats, install software, and more from a remote location. The system also included the useful Sonic RecordNow 7.3 Deluxe, which takes care of disc-burning tasks, and CyberLink PowerDVD for viewing DVDs. As with many business systems, Dell doesn't bundle a productivity suite with the Latitude D410.



Dell backs the Latitude D410 with a long, three-year warranty that features onsite service. The company's 24/7, toll-free tech support line is available for the life of the laptop. Your Web support options depend on whether you're using the Latitude D410 for home or business use--Dell has different sites for each purpose--though both offer the same satisfying resources, including downloads and FAQs. And all users can access the handy forums, which are organized according to specific components and are moderated by Dell's own tech reps.

The Dell D410 offers great battery life. With just the standard 6-cell battery I achieved 3:40 minutes of battery life using screen brightness at 6/8 level, using the computer to write a document and surf the web (so wi-fi was on). If battery life under 4 hours isn't enough, then the extended life 9-cell battery is available. I used the 9-cell battery during a 35 hour trek back from Hong Kong (many flight transfers and delays involved in that trip) and squeezed 7 hours of use out of the 9-cell battery. That was while using wi-fi at the various airports, using IM to chat, MS Word to write this review and with 6/8 level brightness.