This is my rant post against the dell latitude line. I am IT, in a company that uses DELL. I work with them everyday and can't believe the prices they charge for what their product is. This is my advice for you to stay away, and go with another brand eg Lenovo. Dell knows they have companies like mine by the cahones; we want to keep as much of our infrastructure as consistent as possible e.g, dell server, dell storage, dell monitior, dell laptop. Catch 22, the more dell equipment we have, the more want to stay with Dell.
The machines I work with are:
14" d620, d630, e5400, e5410, e5420, e6420
13" e4300, e4310, 6320
1. screens. The screens are getting wider, more squeezed and smaller. The colors/contrast are worse, with a horrible blue tint. I see $500 laptops with much better screens.
the d630 latitude line had the best screen and blows away the other latitude models. Side by side, anyone can see the huge quality drop, smaller, way worse color, less sharp.
2. large body, small where it counts.
while the screens are shrinking, the laptops are growing significantly in side. I'm typing on a e6420 and it has a huge 1" bezel around it. They were too cheap to put a screen in that actually fit the panel.
this compares their portable 13" line. You can see how the laptop has grown in size with each generation
[URL="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/MiEz0ueYoQ4Fryk7BwNF6gV8qaPR_oQlwGzr8deAqWY?feat=directlink"]photos[/URL]
bottom to top:
e4300 13"
e4310 13"
e6310 13"
e6420 14"
3. overall build quality (BQ) / tightness
here again the oldest d630 was the champ. Much tighter and firmer feel with a the best trackpad of the bunch. note: the 6400 vs 5400 latitude was a bump in price, with better plastics. However, the latest 6420 vs 5420, there is only a slight BQ incease [lid, lid latch], but 6420 is trying to be cool but is ugly as sin = organge lines around keyboard with HUGE screen and keyboard bezels. I think the 6420 may be actually thicker than the 5420. the e6420 is a lot firmer than e5410 e5400 but it’s still bulky and large.
best to worse: d630, e4300, e4310, e6320, e6420, e5420, e5410, e5400
