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Dell Latitude D-600

Started by yokosi, September 06, 2003, 17:48 hrs

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I have been looking at a new Dell Latitude 600M  for the past few days:

14" screen
1.3 GHz Pentium-m CPU
Gigabit Broadcom integrated network
512 MBytes RAM
Hitachi TravelStar 40G 7200 rpm drive
32 Meg ATI Radeon 9000 video
Dell TrueMobile 1300 WLAN mini-PCI wireless card (BroadCom 802.11g)
QSI CD-RW/DVD combo drive

These are small form factor, relatively lightweight notebooks.  Dell (Quanta) has managed to incorporate quite a bit into a small, sturdy chassis - modem, LAN (wireless and wired), serial port, parallel port, 2 USB ports.  There's only one drive bay (it'll take the combo DVD-CD/RW drive, or the floppy) and only one PCMCIA socket, but that's a tradeoff made for small size.  With everything onboard or in the mini-PCI slot, the single PCMCIA socket isn't much of an issue.

The outside of the notebook is a sturdy metal and the keyboard and overall construction are quite solid - every bit a match for the IBM T-series we evaluated before we decided on the Dell's, but without IBM's higher price (which amounted to several hundred dollars per unit).

Despite the relatively low clock speed (1.3 GHz) the system is quite fast - almost a match for my 2.0 GHz Inspiron 8200 system -- the much larger L2 cache (1 MByte vs. 512 for the P4-m) and the more efficient (more Athlon, less Intel-like) design also helps there.

In short - if you're looking for a small to mid-sized, highly portable system, check this one out - the Latitude D600 is also available with a slightly different chassis as the Inspiron 600M.

Best of all, since this is one of the first of a run of new D-series machines, the parts (drive bays, docking stations) will be compatible with future models.  The older C-series had about a five-year run of interchangeability (try getting that from IBM or just about anyone else).

It's yet another indication of why Dell is where it is in the marketplace.  Dell's not perfect, but it seems to come up with machine after machine that cannot be beat when it comes to value and performance for the dollar.

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