thanks for your review. If I may, I have a question: How do you normally decide on what laptops to review? I'm guessing you have to prioitise, so is there a consensus that you mostly review laptops that are either equipped with new technology (like the first optimus laptops) or laptops that you somehow know are going to be highly recommended (like the recent XPS 15)?
Also, are there any plans on reviewing Vostro? I recently bought a Vostro 3500 with core i3 and 2gb ram for something around the equivalent of $ 400, which I thought was pretty nice.
Mostly, it's whatever we can get our hands on. ASUS is generally willing to send out their latest and greatest, as is Dell, but even they tend to be selective. If they don't think we're likely to give a reasonably favorable review, they're less likely to send a unit our way. At least, that's my experience after three years of laptop reviews.
In this particular instance, Intel wanted to make sure I had an "Intel reference laptop" for times when I might want to compare, say, AMD IGP vs. Intel IGP, or old Intel vs. new Intel. So when they asked if I was interested, naturally I said sure. They offered a ThinkPad but as I mentioned, I wanted to play with a Latitude just as a change of pace. This review was obviously lower priority... basically, get it done before Sandy Bridge ships. Dell was also a little concerned with the review, as it's not what they'd deem their "best foot forward".
If I have the luxury of getting numerous laptops, I also try to prioritize on the stuff I think people will want to read/buy. A new technology is more interesting than "yet another standard Arrandale laptop". In the case of the XPS 15, I moved that ahead of a couple other laptops I've had longer (like this Latitude and the Acer 5551G). Toss in Dustin and Vivek and we get a fair selection of laptops reviewed all told. Now if only we could get Sony and HP to send us more stuff... Dustin has the Envy 17 now, but we're about three months late on that one. :-\
Is there somewhere on the site that we can send in suggestions for reviews/stories that we'd like to see? If you had several things in the backlog, maybe have us vote on which we'd be more interested in...
On that note, please bug ASUS to send you guys one of the new U36's as soon as they can. From the press release, it looks like it'll be a direct competitor to the Air, only with a much faster cpu.
I'm looking for a new super light laptop that I can carry all day when I'm at school, and it just jumped to the top of my xmas money shopping list.
If you do have any pull with Dell, I would also love it if you reviewed the Vostro 3400/3500. I purchased the 3400 back in June and am mostly happy with it. It was definitely one of the best relatively thin/light laptops available at the time. The only problem, which seems very common, is that once the fan spins up to its medium setting, it doesn't want to return to its lower levels. Hopefully, if you get to review this model then maybe Anandtech can bring more media attention and push Dell to fix it sooner.
The only other issue with this laptop is the poor monitor. While I love the matte finish, the vertical viewing angles are absolutely terrible.
Good build quality, good keyboard, pretty good touchpad, looks decent (it's the red one), typical 15.6" 1366x768 screen (i.e. not very good), but matte.
Battery life is good, there was little bloatware on it and it has a good port selection, save that it lacks firewire. It has express card, though, so you can just get a firewire card (we did).
It's a bit on the heavy side, but I'm comparing it to my brothers Macbook pro 15 (core i7).
Prices are good (well, we got the basic one when it was released), and for regular use, the intel igp is enough.
Compared to consumer laptops for the same price, you may lose a bit of performance (higher clocked cpu or a dedicated gpu), but the improved build quality, battery life and keyboard more than makes up for it.
I would like to point out that the 3300/3400/3500/3700 reintroduced magnesium alloy chassis to the main vostro line, accounting for the good build quality. It also uses aluminium (note the extra i, yanks) panels and fairly high quality plastics.
On pricing: I think what makes Latitude and Vostro laptops attractive to consumers is the Dell outlet (you gotta use the coupons which are floating around regularly). E.g., I got a refurbished E6410 with i5-520m, WXGA+, 250GB 7200rpm HDD, 4GB, Intel IGP, Win 7 Pro x64, Bluetooth, 6300agn and some other stuff for $709 out the door (that included ~9% NY state tax). Given you still get the 3-year warranty, this is a mightily attractive price imo.
Two minor things: - I also had performance issues prior to doing a clean install. Apart from a clean install, the A05 BIOS also helped. The A06 BIOS (released today) promises a number of additional fixes as well as performance improvements. E.g., what bothered me is the slow POSTing of the E6410, the A06 BIOS seems to have fixed this. - Probably our opinions differ here but my primary complaint about the E6410 is that the blue status LEDs are waaay too bright, they really bother me in low light.
Your point on the Dell Outlet is dead-on. I got a Latitude E4200 ultralight for a friend for $690 (they start at $1700 new) with a three-year warranty. Every Outlet order I've placed is indistinguishable from new product.
I've just started working on some E6410s here, and like most Dell Latitudes, they're strong, well-built, and the Core i5 is fast. I own a ThinkPad T400 myself that's been souped to maximum performance, but considering Lenovo's slow slide in quality control standards, an E6410 would be my choice if I was in the market, rather than the T410.
Yup yup, I'm also a happy Dell Outlet customer. I picked up a Dell Latitude 13 with SU7300 CPU for $451 out the door. Mine has a big green REFURBISHED sticker on the bottom, some sticker residue on the bottom and the lid may be a hair warped, plus it showed up with a stripped screw on the bottom, but I'm still reasonably happy with it.
At the outset of the review you stated that the focus was the Intel IGP. Why only compare it to systems with discrete instead of comparing to AMD IGP systems? And why only on 3DMark - why not games, media playback?
If you do NOT use Dell Fast Track service, and you are in Canada, The Latitude E series, also comes with 3 year next buisness day on site service at a minimum, making it even more attractive. I have the E6400, with a Hitachi 160GB 5400RPM HDD, the the Quadro NVS 160M, Core 2 Duo P8400, and I see no sluggishness visible (other than the slower boot, or slower start-up of very large programs like PhotoShop), but it's clear it's the HDD.
Moreover, it is to be noted, that the laptop comes with really solid hinges, all in metal (and not plastic which can break easy, after a year or so of usage). As for the laptop lid, I can't say for sure about the E6410 as I don't have it, but if it's the same as the E6400 (which probably is the case), then it's in metal (magnesium allow), with a very thick coat of primer and paint, except the small \___/ shape edge of the lid is in plastic (probably having it in metal would effect the wireless antenna as they are found there). I know this, because I had my lid change once on my E6400 (I have the On-site service - which is excellent by the way), and you can clearly see it's metal, from the inside.
Another point that was not cover in the E6410, well it's not the focus of the review, but still, is to access the laptop internal you are 1 screw away from getting FULL access, you can switch anything very easily. Wireless card, Bluetooth, heatsink, CPU, heck you can even pull out the motherboard with a few screws (ok well you have 2-3 screws under the keyboard to remove for this part... but never the less it's super easy to remove the keyboard.... for a laptop, of course. (See picture from Anatech review)
Backlit keyboard is a must, and the in my opinion, the Latitude E series back lit keyboard is very good. It lit very well the keys, where you can clearly see the lettering. The brightness is fully adjustable via Dell Control Point software.
Finally, this laptop also has Dell new long lasting 9-cell battery with a 3 year warranty on it.
I agree with your point about the easy internal access. Business laptops are so much easier to work on in general, and they actually come with instructions. It's nice to be able to open up the machine and swap out or repair anything you want and never get that feeling "am I going to be able to put this back together".
I have the E6510 (work supplied laptop) and the lid is different than on the E6400 or E6500 - it's definitely plastic. The E6400's and E6500's definitely do look better with the metal lid. Sluggishness could be the Dell controlpoint software (inane security stuff). First thing I did was take the HD out and replace it with an SSD. Now it's nice and fast. Although I have the NVS3100m option - and Autodesk Inventor works really smoothly on it.
best thing you can do to a laptop is get an SSD. I own like many here a refurb e6410 fully loaded with 310m, bl keyboard, core i5, etc that i got for about $650 so no complaints on price/specs. However it would be so much nicer if Dell will give us the ability to replace the removable dvd drive with an ssd. A removable hdd cage where i can fit an ssd would be the best feature of this lappy.
Kinda pricey for what it is, but if you spend as much time on your work laptop as I do on mine, the extra $ is worth it.
In my E6400 I currently have an Intel 80GB G2 SSD in the primary HDD bay and the 160GB HDD that came with the laptop in the modular bay. I swap this out with the DVD burner as needed.
Fast dual core processor + 4GB RAM + SSD and Windows 7 64 bit is a great combination.
our company ordered a batch of these, and about half of them we received had motherboard related issues. yes, i know it can happen to any band of laptop and/or batch of computers that get manufactured, but this doesn't help ones reliability thoughts on the maker. i was very disappointed. of the few that did work fully, i was very happy with the performance. hopefully, this doesn't happen to us again from dell.
The E6410 is the standard for our company right now as well. We've come across a number of issues such as bad memory modules and bad cdrom drives. About 40% of the E6400's we've ordered so far have had an issue of quality control of some type so far.
I would say we have had issues with about 20% of all current-generation Latitudes at the companies I service. Of those, the majority were related to the cheap Hynix RAM or Seagate 2.5" drives that Dell chooses to ship in their laptops. In fact, the Seagate failure rate is so annoying that I will never buy that brand again, for home or work.
The only MAJOR issue that I have ever had with Latitude was that ~75% of all D620 laptops that I ever worked on eventually had graphics card failure with the onboard Quadra chipset. Like the Deathstar drives years ago, it was one of those things you read about on tech forums, then actually experience in real life.
Overall though, the quality of Latitude is more or less equal to Lenovo business class laptops.
I have found that the one weakness of my Dell E6400 is the Dell Control Point software. My brand new machine felt REALLY sluggish relative to the hardware inside. After experiencing a couple BSOD's (which I never expected on a brand new machine) I deleted the Control Point suite. After that, all my BSOD issues were gone and the everything was much quicker.
If you can, blow away Dell Control Point, it should take care of most performance issues. For reference I have a Dell E6400, C2D P8600, 4GB, 160GB, Quadro NVS160M.
I want to confirm the problems with the dell control point software. Some versions of it are broken. Googling will tell you which (older) versions do work. Copying some dlls manually repairs some of the problems.
That said, if you do not need WAN access that you can run fine without the DCP software, and I am very happy with the E6400, E6410 and E6500's which we use at work.
For reference, my own laptop is a Latitude E6500 (C2D P8400, 4GB, Quadro NVS 160M and the good 1920x1200 display). No DCP, no sluggish performance.
Whoops! You're right; I fixed the table now. I thought all of the HDDs for the E6410 were 7200RPM, but it turns out the one option where you can get a 5400RPM is the minimum 160GB drive. That's what Intel shipped me, and that's almost certainly part of the sluggishness. Dell's Control Point software is probably the other half.
Isn't it a sad state of affairs where a 1440 x 900 resolution in a 14" laptop screen on s business laptop is considered great. My 12.1" Toshiba M400 from years ago has 1400 x 1050 for petes sake. 2 years ago I could get a Dell Lattitude with 1920 x 1200 resolution in a 15" panel. WTH has happened to the world where the highest resolution you can get in a 20" panel is only 1920 x 1080?
I don't care if a movie looks good on my computer, I just want to be able to get some work done, sigh.
I'd say going higher resolution on 14" will displease the vast majority of users. Enthusiasts and people with great eyesight might be happy, but I've had more than a few encounters with people over the years that think current resolutions make everything "too small". I know our readership is mostly in the 20-35 year old range, but the majority of business people are in the 35+ bracket. Personally, I also find anything more than 900p/WXGA+ at 14" to be too small. Similarly, 768p on a 10" netbook gives you very small pixels. I'd say the vast majority of regular users would prefer the following resolutions:
10" and smaller: sadly, 1024x600 is probably enough. 11.6-13.3": 1366x768 or 1280x800. 13.3-14.1": 900p or 1440x900 15-16": Here you can finally go 900p to 1080p 17" and larger: 900p minimum to 1080p or WUXGA.
There's some overlap, especially on the larger side of the scale, but if you gave me 1080p in a 13" LCD I'd be squinting all day long. And before you ask, no, glasses won't help my situation (although corneal replacement might... yeah, a bit extreme if I don't *need* to have it done).
I guess I never have believed that people actually prefer the resolution on these displays. I write, QA, Debug code all day long. Dealing with low resolution displays is o.k. much of the time, but sometimes it becomes unbelievably frustrating. Scroll code up, scroll code down, up, down, up, down.
Is there a laptop today, that even is available with a WUXGA screen? The smallest LCD monitor in WUXGA is 24" which is crazy big. Do we really want to have to physically move our head to do our work?
Consider the monitors of 2 to 3 years ago. A typical business class LCD monitor in a 17" size was 1280 x 1024. Tech from 3 years ago. And today, 1440 x 900, something with significantly less horizontal real-estate is considered Great. Great for what? Browsing websites, which most of their content is either up or down? Working on spreadsheets, which has content in both planes? Working on Visio Diagrams, Writing E-mails, writing C# code? About the only thing having wider yet shorter resolution is good for is people who don't like to see black bars when they watch movies.
I appreciate the reviews here, I agree the displays in laptops need to be much better, I just think they also need to do something to improve the resolution, especially in business class machines. People are supposed to be working, not watching movies (at least for most businesses). Why are these machines following along with consumer grade equipment being optimized for movie watching?
The aspect ratio wars are unfortunately pretty much done and over, and the winner is 16:9... but thankfully most business laptops still stick with 16:10. I agree that 16:9 is a lousy choice, and I was happier with 16:10. I'm not sure when the last time was that anyone manufactured a 4:3 or 5:4 laptop; my wife has a 4-year-old Latitude that's 1280x800, so I think it's probably more like 5-6 years since 1280x1024 was readily available.
One thing to keep in mind is that wider also worked out better for keyboards. You can make a reasonable sized keyboard fit in a 13.3" widescreen chassis, whereas a 13" 4:3 or 5:4 would be more like the width of a 12.1" widescreen chassis. Remember the old ThinkPad with the butterfly keyboard? So it's a balancing act between how many LCD panels they can get out of a certain size glass substrate, how big they can make the keyboard, how light they can make a laptop, etc.
I'd say movies and games benefit from being wider, and on a higher resolution display you can do two pages side by side in Word. For spreadsheets it's a wash, and for coding if you can do side-by-side view it may help as well (decrease the indent to 2-3 spaces instead of 8 maybe?) It really depends on how you use your system, but there are certainly times when the opposite of widescreen is desirable (i.e. portrait view for reading long web pages).
As for WUXGA laptops, you can still find them, but choices are limited. 17" business laptops (Dell Precision, HP EliteBook) and the MacBook Pro 17 have WUXGA panels I believe.
Get a handle on one of those WUXGA laptops and take a look at it from the approach of productivity. Compare those to perhaps their same version with their standard display from that aspect. And then perhaps discuss the trade off in real-estate vs visual pain vs cost.
I think the cost piece is where it would push it over the edge, i.e. the dell m6500 precision is a $300 premium for WUXGA. (yes, the apple 17" mackbook pro has WUXGA)
Interestingly, high rez macs are not new, as there are some posts out there of folks sticking a WUXGA resolution 15" panel into older Mac Book Pros. Apparently I'm not the only one that would prefer a little higher rez. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=20775...
Why don't hook up your laptop to your dock and a high-res screen at work? That's really why you have business laptops to begin with. Docking capabilities, maybe now days (comes in after docking though) support for AMT/vPro and remote administration features. At the road you have to sacrifice some, at the desk you should have 1920x1200 S-IPS for $400 or better. A good 2560x1440 screen shouldn't cost more then $1000, and you can skimp on the workstation laptop instead and possibly get by with a more usable business model. Some compromises has to be made at least if you want <17".
Well, it depends on your point of reference. The glossy black (or glossy dark) laptops are horrible. Neutral grey/silver will inherently hide a lot of fingerprints, and white laptops do so even more. But you won't be free from fingerprints just by getting a matte finish; they're just not quite so apparent.
Not sure if you've looked at the SB preview and architecture articles, but I'd say 20% is probably reasonable as an average. Some benchmarks/apps will be even faster, but there will also be those that don't benefit a lot. Here's Anand's look at the SB architecture, which explains where the performance improvements come from: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/intels-sandy-br...
I guess we'll just have to wait for hardware to see how much it actually performs. Maybe most of the increase will come from higher Turbo modes? But there are enough changes to the entire package that we should see some pretty decent performance boosts.
"I also appreciate the move back to an old-style 16:10 aspect ratio, though I still prefer the 1080p LCD in the Studio XPS 16 over WXGA+"
Hold on to it, its the last one. All latitudes will go to 16:9.
You may not have noticed, but the E6510 (same as E6410, but 15.6" screen) has 16:9 with 1920x1080 as highest resolution. This is really annoying, +5 year old latitudes have better resolution than that ! (1920x1200) For business vertical resolution is absolutely more useful than horizontal and I expect a business line, for which you pay a considerable premium, would consider that.
The only thing 16:9 is better for is wide-screen TV programs so you don't have some black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. It is not even better for movies because those are 2.35:1 (~21:9) so there will be black bars anyway.
AFAICT, it's not Dell and the laptop people driving the move to 16:9. I could be mistaken, but it appears to be primarily a push by the LCD panel makers so they can increase the number of panels they get from a glass substrate (and thus increase profit margins). Maybe the LCD manufacturers are happy with the move as well, but the only alternative appears to be paying a significant price premium to get a customized LCD. Sony has done that with their VAIO Z; no one else uses a 13.1" LCD at least, and certainly not a 900p panel in that size. But then you look at the VAIO Z cost and wonder if it's worth doing. :-\
Nobody is driving this move to 16:9. The problem is that nobody is driving anything. This whole move from 19:10 to 16:9 is happening because of customer ignorance and vendor fear.
The customer would probably prefer 16:10 but most are not even aware of the issue and do not know much at all about computers, so price is usually the strongest motivator for them.
Vendors are afraid to use the little more expensive 16:10 screens because of the above and therefor switch to 16:9. Initially for the consumer models, but this results in less demand for 16:10 screens. They get more expensive, harder to get, the price difference increases and vendors are even more inclined to switch to 16:9
result: a race to the bottom of the barrel and soon we can only get portables with 16:9 screens while most people really would like to have a 16:10 screen for a few measly dollars more (whether they know it themselves or not, there were good reasons to choose 16:10 over 16:9 when the move was made from 5:4.)
I can understand vendors going along with this for the sake of their bottom line, but I do not understand why they do this for their business lines which are about 2x the price of the average consumer laptop anyway. I mean, people for whom price is the strongest motivator are not your target anyway.
Dell and all the other laptop companies need to push their vendors to perform better. As is pointed out time and time again by this site, these companies are simply not providing high quality displays on these laptops, regardless of the resolution.
These companies seem bent on commoditizing their products with no one willing to put out a best product at a reasonable price. Everyone seems satisfied providing a sufficient product.
... if you want non-glossy and matte you pay the extra price for the business type notebooks. Even though they tend to have crappier components. At least the have display port and not only vga but I tend to agree to still include vga especially in business laptops because so many vga beamers still out there.
I just got an E6410 from work and I'm quite happy with it. There is one big problem at the moment though and that is Linux support for the Intel integrated graphics. This is not Dells fault but a problem none the less. When you boot with no modifications the screen just goes blank. With some added kernel parameters you can some times get it to boot (typically modesetting). Success depends on kernel version and maybe other factors. There's also the option to revert to an older kernel or boot in VESA mode but that's not really a solution I can live with. Just google "E6410 blank screen" if you want to look at user discussions. So my advice if you want to get an E6410 to run Linux on now is to get one with the Nvidia addon graphic card.
Asus has released new laptops including U41,U31,U36 They seem pretty cool, specially U36 because of its weight and thickness.... I hope you review them soon.... :)
The performace problems with the Latitude 6x10 line is an STM accelerometer. Uninstall the drivers, and disable the 'unknown device' and the stutters will vanish. Also, right at startup, the touchpad app eats CPU cycles and causes the touchpad to stutter. Get rid of the app (not the drivers), or wait a bit after login before using it.
BTW, on the issue of price, Dell has huge markup in the website pricing. Call the 800 #, and they'll knock 20-30% or more off. I've been buying E6510's for $800, when the web lists them at $1250 for the config I use.
I've had original 6400 for about 20 months now. The baby has not had even a slighest feeling of build quality after about six moths of use -- for example, paint wairing of from the speaker grills, making everyone think I have an ancient laptop. The whole body appears to have given up for resistance -- almost all parts feeling that they will drop of accidentally any day,
Quite surprisingly,the feeling just ain't enough. The laptop has not really shown any true phyhysical weaknesses, it's really pushing on despite the in the end more or less cosmetic damages it has suffered from quite intesive daily use. I would not like to pay any compliments to Dell -- the laptop has felt as if it has a very weak build quality since about the six first months of use. Despite of this it has really done everything that was expected -- and still does, after more than 1,5 years of usage. Apparently they are doing something correct. And even if they do not, they still have on-site quarantee that absolutely works also in the Northern Europe (proven with previousn Dell laptop with screen breaking during the holidays in the middle of nowhere on the countryside) .
Well, I should have the E6410 for more than a couple months thanks to Intel, so we'll see what it looks and feels like in another six months. I've used plenty of Inspirons over the years, and my wife has an older Latitude, and they generally hold up well (unlike the Inspirons). The hinges definitely LOOK solid, but they might degrade over time. I'll be using this as my "main" laptop for a while and so I plan on doing some sort of blog update down the road.
Good review however the weight spec is incorrect. I've weighed about 6-7 different Dell latitude e6410's and none of them weigh under 5lbs (with optical drive and 6 cell battery, not including the power adapter) on my home scale. For some reason, Dell continues to post misleading weight weight specs with hard to find 4 cell batteries on it's website.
Please weigh the laptop on a weighing scale and if i'm correct revise the weight in the specs.
Funny how quickly Dell jumped from the E6400 to the E6410. The 6400s were crap. We've had to have the motherboard replaced in at least half of the ones we've gotten due to some weird bug that severely underclocks the CPU to the point of crippling the machine. We tried driver updates, we tried BIOS updates, we tried completed OS rebuilds, nothing would fix it. We finally tried having the mobo replaced and that seems to be fixing the issue 99% of the time. We're now starting to get 6410s, and they're much better so far.
http://www.elecachat.fr/dell-latitude-e6410.html Remise batterie/chargeur dell latitude e6410 d’une hate capacité dell latitude e6410 li-ion portable batterie, prix le plus bas, le meilleur service, livraison rapide et garantie de 1 an.
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G-Man - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Hey Jarred,thanks for your review. If I may, I have a question: How do you normally decide on what laptops to review? I'm guessing you have to prioitise, so is there a consensus that you mostly review laptops that are either equipped with new technology (like the first optimus laptops) or laptops that you somehow know are going to be highly recommended (like the recent XPS 15)?
Also, are there any plans on reviewing Vostro? I recently bought a Vostro 3500 with core i3 and 2gb ram for something around the equivalent of $ 400, which I thought was pretty nice.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Mostly, it's whatever we can get our hands on. ASUS is generally willing to send out their latest and greatest, as is Dell, but even they tend to be selective. If they don't think we're likely to give a reasonably favorable review, they're less likely to send a unit our way. At least, that's my experience after three years of laptop reviews.In this particular instance, Intel wanted to make sure I had an "Intel reference laptop" for times when I might want to compare, say, AMD IGP vs. Intel IGP, or old Intel vs. new Intel. So when they asked if I was interested, naturally I said sure. They offered a ThinkPad but as I mentioned, I wanted to play with a Latitude just as a change of pace. This review was obviously lower priority... basically, get it done before Sandy Bridge ships. Dell was also a little concerned with the review, as it's not what they'd deem their "best foot forward".
If I have the luxury of getting numerous laptops, I also try to prioritize on the stuff I think people will want to read/buy. A new technology is more interesting than "yet another standard Arrandale laptop". In the case of the XPS 15, I moved that ahead of a couple other laptops I've had longer (like this Latitude and the Acer 5551G). Toss in Dustin and Vivek and we get a fair selection of laptops reviewed all told. Now if only we could get Sony and HP to send us more stuff... Dustin has the Envy 17 now, but we're about three months late on that one. :-\
QChronoD - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Is there somewhere on the site that we can send in suggestions for reviews/stories that we'd like to see? If you had several things in the backlog, maybe have us vote on which we'd be more interested in...On that note, please bug ASUS to send you guys one of the new U36's as soon as they can. From the press release, it looks like it'll be a direct competitor to the Air, only with a much faster cpu.
I'm looking for a new super light laptop that I can carry all day when I'm at school, and it just jumped to the top of my xmas money shopping list.
jgrunhut - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Jarred,If you do have any pull with Dell, I would also love it if you reviewed the Vostro 3400/3500. I purchased the 3400 back in June and am mostly happy with it. It was definitely one of the best relatively thin/light laptops available at the time. The only problem, which seems very common, is that once the fan spins up to its medium setting, it doesn't want to return to its lower levels. Hopefully, if you get to review this model then maybe Anandtech can bring more media attention and push Dell to fix it sooner.
The only other issue with this laptop is the poor monitor. While I love the matte finish, the vertical viewing angles are absolutely terrible.
Thanks,
Jason
fabarati - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I got a 3500 for my mother.Good build quality, good keyboard, pretty good touchpad, looks decent (it's the red one), typical 15.6" 1366x768 screen (i.e. not very good), but matte.
Battery life is good, there was little bloatware on it and it has a good port selection, save that it lacks firewire. It has express card, though, so you can just get a firewire card (we did).
It's a bit on the heavy side, but I'm comparing it to my brothers Macbook pro 15 (core i7).
Prices are good (well, we got the basic one when it was released), and for regular use, the intel igp is enough.
Compared to consumer laptops for the same price, you may lose a bit of performance (higher clocked cpu or a dedicated gpu), but the improved build quality, battery life and keyboard more than makes up for it.
Too bad on the display, though.
fabarati - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I would like to point out that the 3300/3400/3500/3700 reintroduced magnesium alloy chassis to the main vostro line, accounting for the good build quality. It also uses aluminium (note the extra i, yanks) panels and fairly high quality plastics.mschira - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
'nough said!M.
jasperjones - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
On pricing: I think what makes Latitude and Vostro laptops attractive to consumers is the Dell outlet (you gotta use the coupons which are floating around regularly). E.g., I got a refurbished E6410 with i5-520m, WXGA+, 250GB 7200rpm HDD, 4GB, Intel IGP, Win 7 Pro x64, Bluetooth, 6300agn and some other stuff for $709 out the door (that included ~9% NY state tax). Given you still get the 3-year warranty, this is a mightily attractive price imo.Two minor things:
- I also had performance issues prior to doing a clean install. Apart from a clean install, the A05 BIOS also helped. The A06 BIOS (released today) promises a number of additional fixes as well as performance improvements. E.g., what bothered me is the slow POSTing of the E6410, the A06 BIOS seems to have fixed this.
- Probably our opinions differ here but my primary complaint about the E6410 is that the blue status LEDs are waaay too bright, they really bother me in low light.
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Your point on the Dell Outlet is dead-on. I got a Latitude E4200 ultralight for a friend for $690 (they start at $1700 new) with a three-year warranty. Every Outlet order I've placed is indistinguishable from new product.I've just started working on some E6410s here, and like most Dell Latitudes, they're strong, well-built, and the Core i5 is fast. I own a ThinkPad T400 myself that's been souped to maximum performance, but considering Lenovo's slow slide in quality control standards, an E6410 would be my choice if I was in the market, rather than the T410.
Zap - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Yup yup, I'm also a happy Dell Outlet customer. I picked up a Dell Latitude 13 with SU7300 CPU for $451 out the door. Mine has a big green REFURBISHED sticker on the bottom, some sticker residue on the bottom and the lid may be a hair warped, plus it showed up with a stripped screw on the bottom, but I'm still reasonably happy with it.rootheday - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
At the outset of the review you stated that the focus was the Intel IGP. Why only compare it to systems with discrete instead of comparing to AMD IGP systems? And why only on 3DMark - why not games, media playback?AssBall - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Because it is an Intel business laptop?GoodBytes - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
To add,If you do NOT use Dell Fast Track service, and you are in Canada, The Latitude E series, also comes with 3 year next buisness day on site service at a minimum, making it even more attractive.
I have the E6400, with a Hitachi 160GB 5400RPM HDD, the the Quadro NVS 160M, Core 2 Duo P8400, and I see no sluggishness visible (other than the slower boot, or slower start-up of very large programs like PhotoShop), but it's clear it's the HDD.
Moreover, it is to be noted, that the laptop comes with really solid hinges, all in metal (and not plastic which can break easy, after a year or so of usage). As for the laptop lid, I can't say for sure about the E6410 as I don't have it, but if it's the same as the E6400 (which probably is the case), then it's in metal (magnesium allow), with a very thick coat of primer and paint, except the small \___/ shape edge of the lid is in plastic (probably having it in metal would effect the wireless antenna as they are found there). I know this, because I had my lid change once on my E6400 (I have the On-site service - which is excellent by the way), and you can clearly see it's metal, from the inside.
Another point that was not cover in the E6410, well it's not the focus of the review, but still, is to access the laptop internal you are 1 screw away from getting FULL access, you can switch anything very easily. Wireless card, Bluetooth, heatsink, CPU, heck you can even pull out the motherboard with a few screws (ok well you have 2-3 screws under the keyboard to remove for this part... but never the less it's super easy to remove the keyboard.... for a laptop, of course. (See picture from Anatech review)
Backlit keyboard is a must, and the in my opinion, the Latitude E series back lit keyboard is very good. It lit very well the keys, where you can clearly see the lettering. The brightness is fully adjustable via Dell Control Point software.
Finally, this laptop also has Dell new long lasting 9-cell battery with a 3 year warranty on it.
rembo666 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I agree with your point about the easy internal access. Business laptops are so much easier to work on in general, and they actually come with instructions. It's nice to be able to open up the machine and swap out or repair anything you want and never get that feeling "am I going to be able to put this back together".HilbertSpace - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I have the E6510 (work supplied laptop) and the lid is different than on the E6400 or E6500 - it's definitely plastic. The E6400's and E6500's definitely do look better with the metal lid.Sluggishness could be the Dell controlpoint software (inane security stuff). First thing I did was take the HD out and replace it with an SSD. Now it's nice and fast. Although I have the NVS3100m option - and Autodesk Inventor works really smoothly on it.
Hxx - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
best thing you can do to a laptop is get an SSD. I own like many here a refurb e6410 fully loaded with 310m, bl keyboard, core i5, etc that i got for about $650 so no complaints on price/specs. However it would be so much nicer if Dell will give us the ability to replace the removable dvd drive with an ssd. A removable hdd cage where i can fit an ssd would be the best feature of this lappy.somedude1234 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Dell doesn't offer a 2.5" SATA HDD adapter for the modular bay, but I bought an after market one from newmodeus that works great: http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=prod...Kinda pricey for what it is, but if you spend as much time on your work laptop as I do on mine, the extra $ is worth it.
In my E6400 I currently have an Intel 80GB G2 SSD in the primary HDD bay and the 160GB HDD that came with the laptop in the modular bay. I swap this out with the DVD burner as needed.
Fast dual core processor + 4GB RAM + SSD and Windows 7 64 bit is a great combination.
webmastir - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
our company ordered a batch of these, and about half of them we received had motherboard related issues. yes, i know it can happen to any band of laptop and/or batch of computers that get manufactured, but this doesn't help ones reliability thoughts on the maker. i was very disappointed. of the few that did work fully, i was very happy with the performance. hopefully, this doesn't happen to us again from dell.nice review btw, thx.
SandmanWN - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
The E6410 is the standard for our company right now as well. We've come across a number of issues such as bad memory modules and bad cdrom drives. About 40% of the E6400's we've ordered so far have had an issue of quality control of some type so far.Donkey2008 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I would say we have had issues with about 20% of all current-generation Latitudes at the companies I service. Of those, the majority were related to the cheap Hynix RAM or Seagate 2.5" drives that Dell chooses to ship in their laptops. In fact, the Seagate failure rate is so annoying that I will never buy that brand again, for home or work.The only MAJOR issue that I have ever had with Latitude was that ~75% of all D620 laptops that I ever worked on eventually had graphics card failure with the onboard Quadra chipset. Like the Deathstar drives years ago, it was one of those things you read about on tech forums, then actually experience in real life.
Overall though, the quality of Latitude is more or less equal to Lenovo business class laptops.
brshoemak - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I have found that the one weakness of my Dell E6400 is the Dell Control Point software. My brand new machine felt REALLY sluggish relative to the hardware inside. After experiencing a couple BSOD's (which I never expected on a brand new machine) I deleted the Control Point suite. After that, all my BSOD issues were gone and the everything was much quicker.If you can, blow away Dell Control Point, it should take care of most performance issues. For reference I have a Dell E6400, C2D P8600, 4GB, 160GB, Quadro NVS160M.
hennes - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I want to confirm the problems with the dell control point software. Some versions of it are broken. Googling will tell you which (older) versions do work. Copying some dlls manually repairs some of the problems.That said, if you do not need WAN access that you can run fine without the DCP software, and I am very happy with the E6400, E6410 and E6500's which we use at work.
For reference, my own laptop is a Latitude E6500 (C2D P8400, 4GB, Quadro NVS 160M and the good 1920x1200 display). No DCP, no sluggish performance.
Zap - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
WD1600BEVT is AFAIK a 5400RPM drive. The Scorpio Black are 7200RPM while Scorpio Blue are 5400RPM.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Whoops! You're right; I fixed the table now. I thought all of the HDDs for the E6410 were 7200RPM, but it turns out the one option where you can get a 5400RPM is the minimum 160GB drive. That's what Intel shipped me, and that's almost certainly part of the sluggishness. Dell's Control Point software is probably the other half.mike8675309 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Isn't it a sad state of affairs where a 1440 x 900 resolution in a 14" laptop screen on s business laptop is considered great. My 12.1" Toshiba M400 from years ago has 1400 x 1050 for petes sake. 2 years ago I could get a Dell Lattitude with 1920 x 1200 resolution in a 15" panel. WTH has happened to the world where the highest resolution you can get in a 20" panel is only 1920 x 1080?I don't care if a movie looks good on my computer, I just want to be able to get some work done, sigh.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I'd say going higher resolution on 14" will displease the vast majority of users. Enthusiasts and people with great eyesight might be happy, but I've had more than a few encounters with people over the years that think current resolutions make everything "too small". I know our readership is mostly in the 20-35 year old range, but the majority of business people are in the 35+ bracket. Personally, I also find anything more than 900p/WXGA+ at 14" to be too small. Similarly, 768p on a 10" netbook gives you very small pixels. I'd say the vast majority of regular users would prefer the following resolutions:10" and smaller: sadly, 1024x600 is probably enough.
11.6-13.3": 1366x768 or 1280x800.
13.3-14.1": 900p or 1440x900
15-16": Here you can finally go 900p to 1080p
17" and larger: 900p minimum to 1080p or WUXGA.
There's some overlap, especially on the larger side of the scale, but if you gave me 1080p in a 13" LCD I'd be squinting all day long. And before you ask, no, glasses won't help my situation (although corneal replacement might... yeah, a bit extreme if I don't *need* to have it done).
mike8675309 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I guess I never have believed that people actually prefer the resolution on these displays. I write, QA, Debug code all day long. Dealing with low resolution displays is o.k. much of the time, but sometimes it becomes unbelievably frustrating. Scroll code up, scroll code down, up, down, up, down.Is there a laptop today, that even is available with a WUXGA screen? The smallest LCD monitor in WUXGA is 24" which is crazy big. Do we really want to have to physically move our head to do our work?
Consider the monitors of 2 to 3 years ago. A typical business class LCD monitor in a 17" size was 1280 x 1024. Tech from 3 years ago. And today, 1440 x 900, something with significantly less horizontal real-estate is considered Great. Great for what? Browsing websites, which most of their content is either up or down? Working on spreadsheets, which has content in both planes? Working on Visio Diagrams, Writing E-mails, writing C# code? About the only thing having wider yet shorter resolution is good for is people who don't like to see black bars when they watch movies.
I appreciate the reviews here, I agree the displays in laptops need to be much better, I just think they also need to do something to improve the resolution, especially in business class machines. People are supposed to be working, not watching movies (at least for most businesses). Why are these machines following along with consumer grade equipment being optimized for movie watching?
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
The aspect ratio wars are unfortunately pretty much done and over, and the winner is 16:9... but thankfully most business laptops still stick with 16:10. I agree that 16:9 is a lousy choice, and I was happier with 16:10. I'm not sure when the last time was that anyone manufactured a 4:3 or 5:4 laptop; my wife has a 4-year-old Latitude that's 1280x800, so I think it's probably more like 5-6 years since 1280x1024 was readily available.One thing to keep in mind is that wider also worked out better for keyboards. You can make a reasonable sized keyboard fit in a 13.3" widescreen chassis, whereas a 13" 4:3 or 5:4 would be more like the width of a 12.1" widescreen chassis. Remember the old ThinkPad with the butterfly keyboard? So it's a balancing act between how many LCD panels they can get out of a certain size glass substrate, how big they can make the keyboard, how light they can make a laptop, etc.
I'd say movies and games benefit from being wider, and on a higher resolution display you can do two pages side by side in Word. For spreadsheets it's a wash, and for coding if you can do side-by-side view it may help as well (decrease the indent to 2-3 spaces instead of 8 maybe?) It really depends on how you use your system, but there are certainly times when the opposite of widescreen is desirable (i.e. portrait view for reading long web pages).
As for WUXGA laptops, you can still find them, but choices are limited. 17" business laptops (Dell Precision, HP EliteBook) and the MacBook Pro 17 have WUXGA panels I believe.
mike8675309 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Get a handle on one of those WUXGA laptops and take a look at it from the approach of productivity. Compare those to perhaps their same version with their standard display from that aspect. And then perhaps discuss the trade off in real-estate vs visual pain vs cost.I think the cost piece is where it would push it over the edge, i.e. the dell m6500 precision is a $300 premium for WUXGA. (yes, the apple 17" mackbook pro has WUXGA)
Interestingly, high rez macs are not new, as there are some posts out there of folks sticking a WUXGA resolution 15" panel into older Mac Book Pros. Apparently I'm not the only one that would prefer a little higher rez.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=20775...
Penti - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
Why don't hook up your laptop to your dock and a high-res screen at work? That's really why you have business laptops to begin with. Docking capabilities, maybe now days (comes in after docking though) support for AMT/vPro and remote administration features. At the road you have to sacrifice some, at the desk you should have 1920x1200 S-IPS for $400 or better. A good 2560x1440 screen shouldn't cost more then $1000, and you can skimp on the workstation laptop instead and possibly get by with a more usable business model. Some compromises has to be made at least if you want <17".SandmanWN - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Even though it is a matte surface on these instead of gloss. It still show finger prints almost as readily as a gloss finish.SandmanWN - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
On the casing, not the monitor.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Well, it depends on your point of reference. The glossy black (or glossy dark) laptops are horrible. Neutral grey/silver will inherently hide a lot of fingerprints, and white laptops do so even more. But you won't be free from fingerprints just by getting a matte finish; they're just not quite so apparent.mino - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
No fingertips for your eyes or police to sneeze at. :Dmino - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
One thing make me a little puzzled:"~20% with the same number of cores at the same clock speed"
Across-the-board? Are you sure about that cause it sure sound like PR spin.
Cause 20% is in the ball park of Merom -> Arrandale!
IMO it is a feat that SB will be hard-pressed to get even remotely close to.
Than kind of boost was NOT achieved since P4-M -> Banias switch.
10%, maybe approaching 15%, that sounds feasible though.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Not sure if you've looked at the SB preview and architecture articles, but I'd say 20% is probably reasonable as an average. Some benchmarks/apps will be even faster, but there will also be those that don't benefit a lot. Here's Anand's look at the SB architecture, which explains where the performance improvements come from:http://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/intels-sandy-br...
I guess we'll just have to wait for hardware to see how much it actually performs. Maybe most of the increase will come from higher Turbo modes? But there are enough changes to the entire package that we should see some pretty decent performance boosts.
dell169 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
"I also appreciate the move back to an old-style 16:10 aspect ratio, though I still prefer the 1080p LCD in the Studio XPS 16 over WXGA+"Hold on to it, its the last one. All latitudes will go to 16:9.
You may not have noticed, but the E6510 (same as E6410, but 15.6" screen) has 16:9 with 1920x1080 as highest resolution. This is really annoying, +5 year old latitudes have better resolution than that ! (1920x1200)
For business vertical resolution is absolutely more useful than horizontal and I expect a business line, for which you pay a considerable premium, would consider that.
The only thing 16:9 is better for is wide-screen TV programs so you don't have some black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. It is not even better for movies because those are 2.35:1 (~21:9) so there will be black bars anyway.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
AFAICT, it's not Dell and the laptop people driving the move to 16:9. I could be mistaken, but it appears to be primarily a push by the LCD panel makers so they can increase the number of panels they get from a glass substrate (and thus increase profit margins). Maybe the LCD manufacturers are happy with the move as well, but the only alternative appears to be paying a significant price premium to get a customized LCD. Sony has done that with their VAIO Z; no one else uses a 13.1" LCD at least, and certainly not a 900p panel in that size. But then you look at the VAIO Z cost and wonder if it's worth doing. :-\dell169 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Nobody is driving this move to 16:9. The problem is that nobody is driving anything. This whole move from 19:10 to 16:9 is happening because of customer ignorance and vendor fear.The customer would probably prefer 16:10 but most are not even aware of the issue and do not know much at all about computers, so price is usually the strongest motivator for them.
Vendors are afraid to use the little more expensive 16:10 screens because of the above and therefor switch to 16:9. Initially for the consumer models, but this results in less demand for 16:10 screens. They get more expensive, harder to get, the price difference increases and vendors are even more inclined to switch to 16:9
result: a race to the bottom of the barrel and soon we can only get portables with 16:9 screens while most people really would like to have a 16:10 screen for a few measly dollars more (whether they know it themselves or not, there were good reasons to choose 16:10 over 16:9 when the move was made from 5:4.)
I can understand vendors going along with this for the sake of their bottom line, but I do not understand why they do this for their business lines which are about 2x the price of the average consumer laptop anyway. I mean, people for whom price is the strongest motivator are not your target anyway.
mike8675309 - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
Dell and all the other laptop companies need to push their vendors to perform better. As is pointed out time and time again by this site, these companies are simply not providing high quality displays on these laptops, regardless of the resolution.These companies seem bent on commoditizing their products with no one willing to put out a best product at a reasonable price. Everyone seems satisfied providing a sufficient product.
beginner99 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
... if you want non-glossy and matte you pay the extra price for the business type notebooks. Even though they tend to have crappier components. At least the have display port and not only vga but I tend to agree to still include vga especially in business laptops because so many vga beamers still out there.thomberg - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
I just got an E6410 from work and I'm quite happy with it. There is one big problem at the moment though and that is Linux support for the Intel integrated graphics. This is not Dells fault but a problem none the less.When you boot with no modifications the screen just goes blank. With some added kernel parameters you can some times get it to boot (typically modesetting). Success depends on kernel version and maybe other factors. There's also the option to revert to an older kernel or boot in VESA mode but that's not really a solution I can live with.
Just google "E6410 blank screen" if you want to look at user discussions.
So my advice if you want to get an E6410 to run Linux on now is to get one with the Nvidia addon graphic card.
mrmbmh - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
Asus has released new laptops including U41,U31,U36They seem pretty cool, specially U36 because of its weight and thickness....
I hope you review them soon.... :)
yehuda - Monday, December 6, 2010 - link
The best part about the U36 is it'll soon become yesterday's tech and we might get some great deals on it.jp7189 - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
The performace problems with the Latitude 6x10 line is an STM accelerometer. Uninstall the drivers, and disable the 'unknown device' and the stutters will vanish. Also, right at startup, the touchpad app eats CPU cycles and causes the touchpad to stutter. Get rid of the app (not the drivers), or wait a bit after login before using it.BTW, on the issue of price, Dell has huge markup in the website pricing. Call the 800 #, and they'll knock 20-30% or more off. I've been buying E6510's for $800, when the web lists them at $1250 for the config I use.
ExogenBoy - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
I've had original 6400 for about 20 months now. The baby has not had even a slighest feeling of build quality after about six moths of use -- for example, paint wairing of from the speaker grills, making everyone think I have an ancient laptop. The whole body appears to have given up for resistance -- almost all parts feeling that they will drop of accidentally any day,Quite surprisingly,the feeling just ain't enough. The laptop has not really shown any true phyhysical weaknesses, it's really pushing on despite the in the end more or less cosmetic damages it has suffered from quite intesive daily use. I would not like to pay any compliments to Dell -- the laptop has felt as if it has a very weak build quality since about the six first months of use. Despite of this it has really done everything that was expected -- and still does, after more than 1,5 years of usage. Apparently they are doing something correct. And even if they do not, they still have on-site quarantee that absolutely works also in the Northern Europe (proven with previousn Dell laptop with screen breaking during the holidays in the middle of nowhere on the countryside) .
JarredWalton - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
Well, I should have the E6410 for more than a couple months thanks to Intel, so we'll see what it looks and feels like in another six months. I've used plenty of Inspirons over the years, and my wife has an older Latitude, and they generally hold up well (unlike the Inspirons). The hinges definitely LOOK solid, but they might degrade over time. I'll be using this as my "main" laptop for a while and so I plan on doing some sort of blog update down the road.sammykismail - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Good review however the weight spec is incorrect. I've weighed about 6-7 different Dell latitude e6410's and none of them weigh under 5lbs (with optical drive and 6 cell battery, not including the power adapter) on my home scale. For some reason, Dell continues to post misleading weight weight specs with hard to find 4 cell batteries on it's website.Please weigh the laptop on a weighing scale and if i'm correct revise the weight in the specs.
Thanks!
Xenoterranos - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Anyone know how to replace the screen in a Thinkpad T410 with an IPS panel? :)theangryintern - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
Funny how quickly Dell jumped from the E6400 to the E6410. The 6400s were crap. We've had to have the motherboard replaced in at least half of the ones we've gotten due to some weird bug that severely underclocks the CPU to the point of crippling the machine. We tried driver updates, we tried BIOS updates, we tried completed OS rebuilds, nothing would fix it. We finally tried having the mobo replaced and that seems to be fixing the issue 99% of the time. We're now starting to get 6410s, and they're much better so far.shenma - Thursday, May 24, 2012 - link
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