Is there a downside to the D620 vs D820?

You'll hear from me in a few days once my D620 with the quadro card arrives. It was shipped yesterday. I'll probably do a good review over the weekend.

how hot the D620 is

I have D620 (basis unit) two weeks and totally agree that D620 is very nice ( fast in general use, clear screen, thin, solid, especially very quiet). As we know, nothing is perfect; this is the case to this laptop. Many owners complain D620 is warm, even hot. It would be interesting to measure the temperature of D620. I put a digital thermo-couple on the bottom where it is hottest. During the measurements, the laptop is playing DVD and mp3 at same time (which I think is close to general usage). The temperature gradually increased from 23C to 37 to 38 after about 10 min and the fan started to run with a low rotation speed (very quiet). The temperature did not increase further. I would like to say Dell did very well to control heat and fan. We know 37C is normal human-body temperature which is much tolerant. I did not make the laptop in heavier working state, which would make the temperature higher. I am sure the fan is efficient to low the temperature to 37C. In general usage, the temperature of D620 would be 37 to 38 C.

Here are my complaints so far:

1. Build quality not quite what I expected. It's better than an Inspiron, but there are some places where parts join together and there is some free play or slop between the parts. At least it doesn't groan and creak every time you pick it up or move the screen though.

2. Original screen made a very loud buzzing sound. They sent me a new screen, and I swapped it in myself. That noise disappeared.

3. Another buzzing noise, not as loud as the above mentioned, comes from the left side of the laptop. It does this when power consumption is very low, which is pretty much any time I'm running off the battery. Dell says this is normal and their solution is to do something to increase power consumption. For example, if I plug in a USB wireless network adapter the noise goes away. I've never used a laptop that had this problem before, and I'm considering sending it back because of this.

4. I've had issues with the Dell 1390 wireless card. At first it worked fine, but then it started having issues getting an IP from the DHCP server on my network. I've yet to find any positive solution to this. Again, a problem that may push me to send this laptop back.

The few reasons I chose the D820 are as follows:

1-512 Nvidia card
2-15.4 inch screen
3-stereo speakers(D620 has one mono speaker iirc)

I didn't know the D820 had stereo speakers until today when I was listening to Umphrey's McGee - Uncle Wally. It was a very pleasant surprise. One reason I chose the D820 over the D620 was because the D620 only offered a WXGA+ resolution, and I wanted the WUXGA.

Will monitor this thread to learn more about the D620. It's been a toss-up between this, Fujitsu's sub-14 Core duos, the to-be-intro'd D420 (the D420 is intro'd so late in the year that I wouldn't be surprised if it released with the rumored "earlier release from Intel" of Merom...the story that they're moving it up tp beef up the less than steller sales of INTC product, despite this new inro...let's face it...2007 is the big year for INTC...and then the AMD intro of their dual core product) and the ASUS Z35f (a 13 wide vapor-ware machine that's > month late).

BTW, those who have the D820/D620/D520/D610, etc., are the tri-layer Magnesium alloy chassis outside covering metal/magnesium alloy or are they plastic and then the internal "frame" is the tri-metal magnesium alloy????

I've looked everywhere and I don't know and can't seem to find anyone to speculate on it. Thanks.

I have had the D620 for 2 weeks now, and its a very nice machine. However, I still prefer my D610 for 3 main reasons:
1)Higher resolution screen (D620 is SXGA+, my D620 only came with a WXGA screen)
2)My D620 has integrated video, bleh! My D610 has an ATI x300 card, which I have found to run most games with absolutley no problems (runs Far Cry, Half Life 2 and Splinter Cell: CT very smoothly)
3)I don't get to keep the D620, so I don't want to get used to it (Dell is letting me keep the D610)

If I had the better video options on the 620, it would definetly be a great machine. I really like the widescreen(I have a 17" SGI widescreen on my desktop), and since I'm used to a widescreen, my 610 feels like it doesnt have a whole lot of desktop space, even though its a higher resolution.

As far as build quality, I think the D620 is superior to any Dell laptop I have used before(I haven't been able to get my hands on a D810 recently to compare). It's very solid - the case is mostly metal(which conducts heat better, perhaps this is why some people are complaining of it running hot?), and the screen's hinges have no play in them - they are very firm, I like it. Battery life out of the box was 6 hours(with WIFI and BT enabled) so its a significant improvement over my D610, but this could be due to the older battery I have(they are both 54Whr).

Only issue I had is the spot for the BT card is kind of awkward to install the card in. It's not nearly as straightforward as in the D610. My cable from the mobo to the card was also kinked or something so the card didn't work at first, I had to straighten it out. This is due to the sharp angle it takes right before the connector. Just something to watch out for.

If anyone is lookin to get a D620 or D820, I have $50 off coupons good until 5/31. I'm supposed to distribute them around campus, but I'll save 5 in case anyone on this site wants the discount. Just PM me and I'll send you a code, since they are individual codes, and only work once.

jgilbs: You probably won't like the D810 it's Obscenely thick for a Centrino notebook. It's a good 1/4" thicker than my i8200. My D820 is half the thickness and lighter to boot. Too bad Dell didn't ship you a D620 with the Quadro 110M I'm sure you would have loved it.

Whitney, the backside of the lcd and the base is magnesium, and the lcd bezel and palm rest are plastic.

The inner chassis is also magnesium. It's an incredibly sturdy laptop, no flex of squeaxks no matter where you pick it up at.

After moving from a 610 to a 620.... i have to say i do prefer the 620, but there are still things i miss from the 610..

610 had a better screen.. same resolution but it just looked better with better colour saturation and backlighting.

the 620 does get pretty warm, even on full tilt the fan never really kicks in high, and temp is stable @ 75c (this is 100% on both cores)

build quality is a bit patchy, one of the battery catches is broken and one of the cursor keys keeps falling off... ill probably get mine replaced shortly when theve hopefully ironed out the problems.

all in all its a very quick and well built machine