Dell Latitude XT2 with Windows 7

The Latitude XT2 is Dell's multitouch-enabled business convertible-notebook that now includes Windows 7. The XT2 starts at $1,909 and offers a very thin and lightweight business-rugged chassis with an attractive brushed-metal finish. In this review we find out if the XT2's system performance or multitouch support has improved under Windows 7.

Build and Design
The Dell Latitude XT2 has a very professional or industrial appearance with an all dark-grey design, sharp lines and edges, and even exposed screws. dell latitude-e4300 This notebook is definitely not targeted towards those looking for the next designer laptop. Instead, it is aimed squarely at those who just want to get down to business. The brushed metal surfaces are actually specially painted covers that give the look of metal but with the ease of maintenance that paint gives. The finish resists smudges and is much easier to wipe clean than most brushed metal exteriors. If it was painted matte black and had a Lenovo logo printed on it, you would swear it was a ThinkPad.
I personally love the side profile of the Latitude XT2, which is almost perfectly square at all corners. It has no sloped surfaces, no rounded sides, and sits very low to the desk surface. If you are carrying the tablet around in one arm it takes up such a small amount of space that you really don't mind holding it.

Compared to our previous review of the XT2 running Windows Vista or dell latitude z600.html, the same configuration running Windows 7 seems to have taken a performance hit. Under normal day-to-day activities the system doesn't feel up to speed even when compared to new thin and light notebooks. We feel some of this could be blamed on the 5400RPM 1.8" hard drive that is half the speed of common 2.5" 5400RPM drives. Opening up applications such as iTunes felt sluggish and lengthy boot times -- even with the standard bloatware removed- were still near one minute. This could be alleviated by configuring your XT2 with one of the SSD options, but that upgrade drives up the price. The Latitude XT2 also has the disadvantage of slower processor options compared to the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet, which negatively impacts the system performance of the XT2. Gaming performance was weak with the Intel X4500 integrated graphics, but this is true of almost all tablets on the market. HD movie playback was good for 720P and 1080P video, but multitasking in the background while watching an HD movie wouldn't be the best idea with the 1.4GHz processor.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The XT2 keyboard looks and feels great with slim keys and high visibility labeling. The layout is easy to follow with full-size primary keys and appropriately sized function keys. Compared to other notebooks the keys have a shallower throw, which is a side effect of the thin chassis. I actually found the keyboard to be quicker to type on compared to the ThinkPad X200, since the shorter throw means less travel before a key activates. The individual keys have no wiggle when you try to move the top of the key side to side.
The touchpad is an ALPS model running proprietary Dell software. Compared to the average Snypatics model it does show some minor lag, but it still feels responsive and easy to use. I think Dell could have gone with a larger touchpad surface, since the XT2 has enough space to incorporate it if you move the buttons more towards the lower edge of the palmrest. Dell also includes a pointing stick, which worked, but doesn't feel as fluid or responsive as other alternatives I have used.

Screen and Speakers
The 12.1" screen on the Dell Latitude XT2 looks great and is one of the better tablet screens I have seen in person. With the multiple touchscreen and pen input layers that tablets need over the actual display panel, most tablet screens look very hazy or cloudy compared to a standard notebook screen. The 1280 x 800 display on the XT2 looks slightly hazy compared to a normal display, but much nicer than the average tablet screen. One important feature of a tablet or slate screen is wide viewing angles for using the screen from multiple positions without having lots of color distortion. The display on the XT2 is above average in terms of horizontal viewing angles, but still suffers from some distortion when viewing the screen in landscape mode and pushing the screen back.

Dell Latitude E4300

At first glance, you might mistake the Dell Latitude E4300 for an earlier-vintage laptop: Its sharp lines and subtle finish stick out in today's world of glossy gadgets with rounded corners. That's not to say the E4300 isn't a handsome portable, however--it did grow on me. Even better, the matte finish isn't a magnet for fingerprints, dust, and smudges like every iPhone-inspired design on the market. If you don't care about hip style trends that come and go, the vaguely retro E4300 is a pretty sweet all-purpose laptop that can serve you well for general office computing.

Underneath the magnesium-alloy chassis, you'll find a lot of nuances that make the E4300 a well-thought-out piece of equipment. For one thing, the keyboard is a dream to type on. The keys have a pretty long travel, but it's coupled with just the right amount of click at the end. You'll also appreciate the smart key layout. Half-size F1-F12 keys open up room for generous Enter, Shift, Alt, and Ctrl keys. The arrow keys are also arranged in their logical order right next to PgUp and PgDn for easy navigation through documents, spreadsheets, forms, and Web pages. In addition, the key backlighting is just right, not too dim or too bright.

The keyboard isn't the only thing to like here, as the E4300 sports an excellent trackpad with five buttons, scroll margins, and detailed customization software. And if you want an alternative way to move the mouse pointer, Dell has you covered: The low-profile "track stick" centered in the keyboard is easily manipulated by an index finger. It has good feel and response, but no clicking capability.

A few other buttons on the E4300 are worth noting. One, the slick "Latitude On" button, triggers Dell's branded version of the DeviceVM Splashtop technology, which lets you quickly check e-mail, contact, and calendar info without fully booting up the computer; it's an extremely handy feature for the business traveler. On the downside, the keys for volume control and muting are small, awkwardly placed, and very stiff.

The problematic audio controls aren't a dealbreaker if you're uninterested in multimedia, especially since the E4300 has surprisingly thin sound. In our tests the E4300 produced a lot of clipping on low bass, which is typical for small laptop speakers, but that shortcoming combined with distortion in the mids and highs makes the E3400 barely passable for even basic presentation audio. Listening to CDs and movie soundtracks through the built-in speakers was more pain than pleasure.

You want expansion? You got it. A good selection of ports for peripherals and expansion slots rounds out the E4300. You'll find all the usual suspects, including one USB port, ethernet, VGA-out, headphone and microphone ports, and a combo e-SATA/USB connection. A FireWire mini-port is also included for convenience, but it's probably the only port that you won't use often. On the plus side, the E4300 also has slots for SD Card, ExpressCard, and smart cards.

In today's widescreen world, the E4300's traditional 4:3 screen ratio is less than ideal for watching movies, which is okay considering that this system is more of a workhorse computer. Even so, juggling multiple windows when you're multitasking would work slightly better with a 16:9 widescreen. Thankfully, the LED-backlit 13.3-inch screen has very even lighting from dim to bright settings, and in our tests the default color settings were nearly perfect. Blacks weren't quite as deep as those of some of the better laptop screens we've seen, but overall the E4300's video was quite good: Balanced, accurate colors made watching movies fun, while document and Web text looked quite sharp.

As for raw computing power, the E4300's got guts. Our review unit came with an Intel Core Duo P9400 processor running at 2.4GHz, backed by 3GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory and Windows Vista Home Basic (you can opt for other OSs; prices for the system start at $1299, as of February 3, 2010). The E4300 posted a solid WorldBench 6 score of 98, easily landing in the front half among the all-purpose laptops we've recently reviewed. On the other hand, don't count on the Intel 4500MHD graphics chipset to take you far on most games--it just isn't robust enough. Travelers will appreciate the battery's longevity: In our tests, the E4300 managed to last for 5 hours, 27 minutes with its upgraded six-cell lithium ion battery. Keep in mind that the larger battery sticks out from the back of the chassis, adding extra bulk; fortunately, the arrangement isn't as awkward as that on some other laptops with beefed-up batteries.

Dell offers straightforward documentation that covers basic features and setup along with some fairly detailed troubleshooting sections, but it provides no information about the bundled software. The good but slim software collection includes PowerDVD DX for movie watching, dell latitudez600.htmlthe excellent Roxio Creator for disc burning and backup, and a handful of Dell ControlPoint utilities for setting up security, power management, and data connections.

Dell has been in the laptop game for a long time, and the company's experience shows with the E4300. This model strikes a good balance between portability, expandability, computing power, and battery life. If you're in the market for a well-built laptop that will work nicely on your desk or on a road trip, the Dell Latitude E4300 might be perfect for you.

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Dell Latitude Z600

You read car magazines for reviews of wheels you want to buy--and of the odd machine that you'd never be able to afford in a million years but can admire from afar. That's the Dell Latitude Z600 ultraslim laptop. Wait--a "sexy" Dell Latitude? It's hardly practical--or economical--but if you're into forward-thinking tech, this portable that starts at around $2000-plus is worth a good longing look. (Our review unit, as configured, sells for a mere $4323 with its wireless charger and base station).

First observation: The Z600 is wide and way thin. We're talking a laptop with a 16-inch screen and only 0.57 inch thick (and weighs about 4.5 pounds with the standard 4-cell battery). It defies logic creating a machine this big, yet thinner than many ultraportables. You'll want to take it everywhere and show it off, but since it has a 16-inch screen, you'll have a tougher time finding a bag it will fit in. (For what it's worth, Sony's recently unveiled VAIO X Series ultraportables are a whole 0.02 inch thinner.) But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Grab the Z600, and you'll feel a supple, almost rubbery, black-cherry coating reminiscent of what Lenovo does on some ThinkPads. Open her up, and you're greeted by a 1600-by-900-pixel panel. Along the right side, Dell's TouchEdge LCD sensor technology replaces the need to clutter the machine with many shortcuts (you'll find volume controls parked above the keyboard, plus an instant-on shortcut button--more on the latter in a minute). Just tap an indent near the bottom of the panel, and it pulls up an overlay of application shortcuts. Tap the frame, and it launches whatever program you configure. It works really well.

And the screen's colors are crisp enough with still images. The backlit WLED panel does a great job reproducing the gamut of rich, dark tones like the ocean as well as those of bright, vibrant jungle scenes (think of the sample images in your computer's Pictures folder), and it keeps looking sharp whether indoors or out. Glare is minimal. And 720p video installed on one 128GB solid-state drive (our machine came configured with two SSDs) runs smoothly--a small triumph for the integrated Intel 4500MHD GPU, no doubt.

Under the hood of this test rig: A 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU9600 CPU and 4GB of RAM. Aside from the two aforementioned hard drives, these are the kind of guts you'll find in something like anAcer Timeline. Now, as much as like spitting out performance numbers, keep one caveat in mind: Our machine came loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate. Safe bet is that the computer you'd consider buying--assuming you have tons of cash--will come loaded with some flavor of Windows 7. That said, the Z600 got by with a 78 -- fairly average, but impressive considering the size of the machine.

Want to get a little more life out of the machine--or not go into Windows proper? Try Latitude ON, a quick-firing OS that boots in 4 seconds. Not bad considering it runs off a separate ARM CPU, 512MB of RAM, and Linux. Log in and use a 3G WWAN (wireless wide-area networking) connection for easy access to e-mail, contacts, and calendar info synced with your Exchange server or over POP. Through it, you can view MS Office documents and PDF files. It's obviously geared for the mobile businessman on the go. And you can also hit the Web.

Just don't expect miracles. It won't sync with Outlook in Windows. And if you're trying to hot-swap between Windows and Latitude ON, you'll encounter some idle time between powering down one OS and starting the other. (Spokespeople say that the ARM processor won't cut deeply into battery life; we'll keep you posted on what we find). Neat as all this may be, we've seen variants of a Linux quick-boot option in laptops from HP and Asus as well.

Dell also pops in a couple of proprietary apps you might actually use. The optional 2-megapixel camera works with the fairly impressive Dell Capture software to scan business cards; as long as you hold up a "normal" card, the app will read all the info and plug it into your contact manager. The software also scans documents directly into PDF format. You also have options for biometric lockouts, either via the FaceAware app that uses the Webcam or the fingerprint scanner that sits next to the keyboard.

Speaking of the keyboard, it feels, like the rubbery finish around the machine, soft to the touch, and the cut-out keys seem suitably springy and responsive. While it looks all lovely and well-framed floating in the middle of the computer, I can't help wondering if this is the one area where form trumped function for the worse. I would've loved to see a little more room to make the keys a hair larger. And the top-row keys--from the "Esc" and function buttons to "Delete" at the end--seem disproportionately (and unnecessarily) small. You know what isn't small? The multitouch mousing area and good-sized buttons.

Also a little out-of-the-ordinary and one of this laptop's bigger selling points is the wireless laptop charging base station. This $250 add-on powers up the Z600 through a panel similar to how the induction coil works in the Palm Pre's Touchstone charger. The laptop charges just as fast as if you plugged it directly into the power brick. And despite some bloggers crying about how big the charging station is, I can honestly say, after testing it, that it's no larger than other elevated docking stations I've seen. It just does its job in high-tech style. What I really want, though, is a smaller, smarter charging pad that can feed the correct voltages to different devices. Hey, I'm allowed to dream. As for the battery life -- whether you're charging it via cool new wireless or an olde tyme cord -- it only lasts 3 hours in PC World's lab tests. That's meager by just about every standard that's worse than most all-purpose PCs, ultraportables, and even current-generation netbooks.

The other (but slightly less sexy) wireless option is a docking station. No dongles required, it works out the box with your Z600. It houses four USB 2.0 ports, along with DVI-out video, headphone, and mic outputs. Another excessive accessory that came with the Z600: The slickly matching 4X external BD-ROM drive that drives up the price further. But if you're buying this machine, you aren't what I'd consider "thrifty."

Despite being so thin, the Z600 makes room for one USB 2.0 port, one hybrid USB/eSATA port, a DisplayLink video port, and a headset/mic jack. Cleverly hiding behind the screen--bracketing the battery--are power and ethernet jacks. Unfortunately, when trying to get so much done in so little room, some sacrifices must be made. The lack of a flash-card reader may not be a deal breaker for every executive considering this model, but it is for me. And the audio is a loud but tinny afterthought. Get headphones, stat. Beyond that, you get 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional 3G WWAN (mentioned earlier), and the ability to configure it for WiMAX.

The Z600 is a classy-looking machine. So much so that a test flight near the Macworld office area brought a couple nods. But is it perfect? No. Even though it's amazingly thin and surprisingly light, it's still a 16-inch laptop that you might find tough to fit into a travel bag. The Z600 may be perfectly suited as the interoffice status symbol, but for practical mobility I'd have asked for a laptop with a smaller screen. Keep the features, lower the price (and the screen size), and this could be a killer ultraportable.

Bottom line, the Z600 is very much not for everyone. In fact, I think they made this notebook just to sell it to Michael Dell and maybe a couple of his showboating buddies. But it boasts design smarts and a couple of tech innovations that I'd love to see trickle down to more mainstream portables (with slightly smarter implementations). Until then, I can dream


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Dell Inspiron 14

Dell has done more than anyone to keep the midsize laptop in play, churning out inexpensive, reasonably configurable systems, such as the Inspiron 1440. For less than $700, we got a perfectly fine 14-inch dual-core, wide-screen laptop, with plenty of configuration options if we wanted to add or subtract features.

We did, however, wish we could add a better graphics option, as we found on the similarly priced Dell s1440-022B (a retail-only model that is unfortunately no longer available). Also, be aware that usually standard features, such as a Webcam or Bluetooth, will cost extra here, so make sure to factor that into your price estimate.

Dell offsets many features to the optional accessory category, offering a Webcam ($25), Bluetooth ($20), Blu-ray drive ($125), and 802.11n Wi-Fi ($25). While it's a Dell mainstay, we didn't see a mobile broadband antenna as an available option on this particular model. We do like that 15 months of Norton antivirus protection is included in the base price.

In the $600-$900 range, we'd expect to see a standard Intel Core 2 Duo CPU in a midsize laptop, such as the 2.2GHz T6600 found here. It performed on par with the most recent batch of similarly configured mainstream laptops we've seen, which all use the slightly slower 2.0GHz T6500 CPU. One area in which the Dell Inspiron 14 fell slightly behind was in our hard-drive-intensive Photoshop test. Interestingly, the systems we used for comparison all had 320GB Hitachi or Toshiba HDDs--the Dell was the only one with a 250GB Seagate HDD. (Even more interesting--Dell's online configurator now only offers 320 and 500GB drives as options).

That aside, the end result is a fast, reliable experience for mainstream users, very much in line with our expectations.

The wide, flat-topped keys are Dell's current default and provide a pleasant typing experience--the firm, quiet keys are among the most upscale-feeling features on the system. A large-enough touchpad works fine, but the diminutive mouse buttons it's paired with feel cheap and click down unconvincingly. With no media control or quick-launch buttons, you'll have to use the Function keys for volume control and the like. Oddly, it wasn't that long ago that even very inexpensive Dell laptops had a row of dedicated multimedia and quick-launch buttons.

The LED display measures 14.0 inches and features an extrawide 16:9 aspect ratio that matches up with HD video. With 1,366x769 native resolution, it's great for 720p HD content, although the glossy screen coating can attract distracting glare from other light sources. A 1,600x900 display is available as a $75 option if you want a higher screen resolution (keep in mind, this will make text and icons smaller at their default size).