Alright, I finally got my Dell D600, ordered over the phone by Dell Sweden. The D600 isn’t normally sold to private persons here, but they are of course happy to oblige if you call them up instead of using the web page.
I stole this practical review format from someone else:
WHO AM I? Thirty-ish IT-consultant, usually programming web applications in ASP.Net.
COMPUTER EXPERTISE: Above average, but most of my experience comes from stationary computers. I like my gadgets and hardware, and usually build my own computers.
PREVIOUS PC'S OWNED: A number of stationary computers, the last being a P4 1.8 GHz. Had until recently a Compaq notebook with a Celeron 600 MHz that accompanied me on many travels, as well as being used as my primary computer while living abroad. I got the Compaq in 2001 as payment for a job, and have kept it since then.
REASON FOR PURCHASE: Wanted to free up some space in my flat by getting rid of the stationary computer and the desk it was sitting on. That one is now in my closet, to act as web-, ftp- and mailserver, as well as to stream media to my modded xbox. The only computer I work on at home is now this D600, and I intend to use it for writing, surfing, programming and stuff like that. Very little game-playing.
ORDERED CONFIGURATION:
Latitude D600
Pentium 4 M 1.7 GHz Dothan
14.1" SXGA+ Screen (1400x1050)
512MB x1 PC2100 DDR RAM (one stick so I can upgrade in the future)
32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
30GB HD 5400 rpm
8x DVD-ROM
Intel Pro Wireless 2100 MiniPCI Card
Windows XP Professional
I bought a Hitachi 7K60 60gig 7200rpm 8meg cache hard drive to replace the puny one delivered by Dell. Installation was fairly easy, once I figured that I had to move the connector from the existing hard drive to the new one.
ORDERING/ DELIVERY: I ordered the laptop on August 27 by phone by a nice salesperson at Dell. It was quickly built and packaged, and delivered to UPS on Ireland on September 2, but they held on to it for a while, and it wasn’t delivered until September 8. Dell Europe just switched to UPS from Schenker, so that might be the reason for the slight delay. Delivered to my door without any further problems.
GRADE: B
PACKAGING: Everything was there that I ordered. The laptop was securely held by styrofoam in the box. No problems here.
GRADE: A
OUT OF THE BOX: Plugged in the cord (which wasn’t really necessary as the battery was almost fully loaded) and switched it on. It worked without problems, so I installed my other hard drive and did a completely new install of the enclosed Windows XP Professional. I was a bit worried that there would be lots of Dell-stuff integrated with Windows, but the install turned out to be very clean, with no fancy stuff at all.
GRADE: A
BUILD: Nice and clean business-look. Some of the keys are bit oddly placed for my taste, but that’s probably just a matter of getting used to. The function key (“fn”) is placed between CTRL and the Windows key, but in my opinion should be placed on the top of the keyboard. I occasionally hit the track stick when I intend to type the letter B. Apart from that the keyboard is alright (and I’m kind of picky with that).
The only other thing that annoys me is the USB ports on the back side. They are right on top of each other, so I won’t be able to connect my mp3-player at the same time as another USB gadget is connected.
Overall a good and sturdy build. I love the compactness and light weight of it, especially compared to my old Compaq.
GRADE: A-
SCREEN: I was afraid that 1400x1050 would be too much for a 14.1 inch screen, and it took a while to get used to. Now I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. The screen is very sharp, and there are no dead pixels. The only drawback here is that the sweet spot is quite small, so you need to hold your head still..
The brightness when you switch to battery was way too low for my taste, but that was easily configured in BIOS.
GRADE: A-
INTEGRATED I/O: Seeing as I’ve already covered the keyboard, let’s have a look at the other input devices. It’s weird to have the luxury of being able to choose between the track stick and the touchpad here, and I still haven’t decided on one or the other. Usually I use the touchpad though, as you can click by tapping it which means you don’t have to use more than one finger to navigate. The buttons are a bit clumsy though.
In the beginning I sometimes found myself clicking on the menu item next to the one I was aiming for, which might have been a combination of the high resolution and not being used to the touchpad.
GRADE: B
DVD/CDRW: The CD/DVD player seems very fast when installing programs, but that comes with a drawback. When watching DVDs it spins very fast, which makes it vibrate and sound loud enough to disturb you.
GRADE: B
GRAPHICS: Sharp and fast 2D graphics, and that’s all I’m really interested in.
GRADE: A
WIRELESS: In my old Compaq I had a D-Link 108 Mbit/s card, which very often lost contact with the router. The integrated Intel wireless card works like a charm though. Connects immediately, and stays connected. I don’t miss the higher speed of the D-Link at all, considering the increased stability.
GRADE: A
SOUND: The speakers are pretty much crap of course. However, with a pair of good headphones the sound is great, so there’s nothing wrong with the sound card.
GRADE: B
MISCELLANEOUS: Yep, your left hand will get warm. No biggie though, and I’m sure that this will be a nice feature during the long and cold Swedish winter..
It’s pretty silent, even when the fan is running. The hard drive is very silent. A huge leap from my noisy computer now locked away in the closet.
OVERALL: I like it! It has no problems running Visual Studio 2003, SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manage, Word, and Firefox at the same time. A tiny package more than able to handle the software I want to run. Should I encounter any performance problems I’m sure they can be handled by upgrading to a gig of RAM.
OVERALL GRADE: A
BENCHMARKS:
Alright, just for fun I installed 3D-Marks 2001 to test it, and got a score about 4800. No machine you would want to play any FPS games on, but should be enough to handle most strategy games.
PICS:
Sorry for the bad quality of the photos, but I managed to break the lcd on my camera so I can't adjust the settings..
Just to show how much of Visual Studio you can see at 1400x1050:
Screenshot
Tiny laptop on huge couch:
Size
Laptop on the nice secretaire that replaced the boring desk I had before:
Screen
Well, that's all. Any questions?
I stole this practical review format from someone else:
WHO AM I? Thirty-ish IT-consultant, usually programming web applications in ASP.Net.
COMPUTER EXPERTISE: Above average, but most of my experience comes from stationary computers. I like my gadgets and hardware, and usually build my own computers.
PREVIOUS PC'S OWNED: A number of stationary computers, the last being a P4 1.8 GHz. Had until recently a Compaq notebook with a Celeron 600 MHz that accompanied me on many travels, as well as being used as my primary computer while living abroad. I got the Compaq in 2001 as payment for a job, and have kept it since then.
REASON FOR PURCHASE: Wanted to free up some space in my flat by getting rid of the stationary computer and the desk it was sitting on. That one is now in my closet, to act as web-, ftp- and mailserver, as well as to stream media to my modded xbox. The only computer I work on at home is now this D600, and I intend to use it for writing, surfing, programming and stuff like that. Very little game-playing.
ORDERED CONFIGURATION:
Latitude D600
Pentium 4 M 1.7 GHz Dothan
14.1" SXGA+ Screen (1400x1050)
512MB x1 PC2100 DDR RAM (one stick so I can upgrade in the future)
32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
30GB HD 5400 rpm
8x DVD-ROM
Intel Pro Wireless 2100 MiniPCI Card
Windows XP Professional
I bought a Hitachi 7K60 60gig 7200rpm 8meg cache hard drive to replace the puny one delivered by Dell. Installation was fairly easy, once I figured that I had to move the connector from the existing hard drive to the new one.
ORDERING/ DELIVERY: I ordered the laptop on August 27 by phone by a nice salesperson at Dell. It was quickly built and packaged, and delivered to UPS on Ireland on September 2, but they held on to it for a while, and it wasn’t delivered until September 8. Dell Europe just switched to UPS from Schenker, so that might be the reason for the slight delay. Delivered to my door without any further problems.
GRADE: B
PACKAGING: Everything was there that I ordered. The laptop was securely held by styrofoam in the box. No problems here.
GRADE: A
OUT OF THE BOX: Plugged in the cord (which wasn’t really necessary as the battery was almost fully loaded) and switched it on. It worked without problems, so I installed my other hard drive and did a completely new install of the enclosed Windows XP Professional. I was a bit worried that there would be lots of Dell-stuff integrated with Windows, but the install turned out to be very clean, with no fancy stuff at all.
GRADE: A
BUILD: Nice and clean business-look. Some of the keys are bit oddly placed for my taste, but that’s probably just a matter of getting used to. The function key (“fn”) is placed between CTRL and the Windows key, but in my opinion should be placed on the top of the keyboard. I occasionally hit the track stick when I intend to type the letter B. Apart from that the keyboard is alright (and I’m kind of picky with that).
The only other thing that annoys me is the USB ports on the back side. They are right on top of each other, so I won’t be able to connect my mp3-player at the same time as another USB gadget is connected.
Overall a good and sturdy build. I love the compactness and light weight of it, especially compared to my old Compaq.
GRADE: A-
SCREEN: I was afraid that 1400x1050 would be too much for a 14.1 inch screen, and it took a while to get used to. Now I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. The screen is very sharp, and there are no dead pixels. The only drawback here is that the sweet spot is quite small, so you need to hold your head still..
The brightness when you switch to battery was way too low for my taste, but that was easily configured in BIOS.
GRADE: A-
INTEGRATED I/O: Seeing as I’ve already covered the keyboard, let’s have a look at the other input devices. It’s weird to have the luxury of being able to choose between the track stick and the touchpad here, and I still haven’t decided on one or the other. Usually I use the touchpad though, as you can click by tapping it which means you don’t have to use more than one finger to navigate. The buttons are a bit clumsy though.
In the beginning I sometimes found myself clicking on the menu item next to the one I was aiming for, which might have been a combination of the high resolution and not being used to the touchpad.
GRADE: B
DVD/CDRW: The CD/DVD player seems very fast when installing programs, but that comes with a drawback. When watching DVDs it spins very fast, which makes it vibrate and sound loud enough to disturb you.
GRADE: B
GRAPHICS: Sharp and fast 2D graphics, and that’s all I’m really interested in.
GRADE: A
WIRELESS: In my old Compaq I had a D-Link 108 Mbit/s card, which very often lost contact with the router. The integrated Intel wireless card works like a charm though. Connects immediately, and stays connected. I don’t miss the higher speed of the D-Link at all, considering the increased stability.
GRADE: A
SOUND: The speakers are pretty much crap of course. However, with a pair of good headphones the sound is great, so there’s nothing wrong with the sound card.
GRADE: B
MISCELLANEOUS: Yep, your left hand will get warm. No biggie though, and I’m sure that this will be a nice feature during the long and cold Swedish winter..
It’s pretty silent, even when the fan is running. The hard drive is very silent. A huge leap from my noisy computer now locked away in the closet.
OVERALL: I like it! It has no problems running Visual Studio 2003, SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manage, Word, and Firefox at the same time. A tiny package more than able to handle the software I want to run. Should I encounter any performance problems I’m sure they can be handled by upgrading to a gig of RAM.
OVERALL GRADE: A
BENCHMARKS:
Alright, just for fun I installed 3D-Marks 2001 to test it, and got a score about 4800. No machine you would want to play any FPS games on, but should be enough to handle most strategy games.
PICS:
Sorry for the bad quality of the photos, but I managed to break the lcd on my camera so I can't adjust the settings..
Just to show how much of Visual Studio you can see at 1400x1050:
Screenshot
Tiny laptop on huge couch:
Size
Laptop on the nice secretaire that replaced the boring desk I had before:
Screen
Well, that's all. Any questions?
)
