Laptop Musings

I’ve been using a Dell Latitude D420 for the last 1-year now, having upgraded from the Latitude X300. During the early days of making the switch, I thought I’d wait and use the machine for a little while before putting up my views and experiences; then I guess I forgot all about it, so that when I next remembered it was over 6-months of usage and it felt that a whole lot of time had gone by and there was nothing particularly noteworthy to write about. And that’s how another 6-months went by. So what’s there to post about this machine now?

Certainly not a technical review, you’ll find an incredible number of those through google, which will take you into the innards of the machine if that’s what you’d want. This is a little more touchy-feely, so be warned, the views expressed here are strictly my own!

My primary and most important evaluation criterion is weight, as my back no longer conforms to original design specifications and I don’t have the confidence to subject it to standard laptop weight, i.e. about 5+ kg including power adapter & carry-case weight. Which is the reason I’d bought the Latitude X300 earlier, weighing in at an jaw-dropping 1.3 kg, optical drive being external of course, which was a d-bay weighing about 500 gms and the power supply at another 450 gms making for about 2.2 kg of hardware. Now here’s the funny part - the carry-case that Dell had thoughtfully supplied weighed in at 2.1 kg!! Trust me, I weighed it!! So I’d actually gone browsing around a lot, and finally found a Case Logic carry-case, weighing a remarkable 600 gm…. I guess you get the idea…. I’m slightly obsessive about laptop weight! :o)

The Latitude X300 was silver, sleek, sexy and yet a great workhorse of a machine. I’d used it for over 2-years with only one issue involving the display, which Dell Support handled brilliantly - they just completely replaced the upper portion of the laptop along with the display, thus making it look new again, much to my delight. Given all this, I’d have to be a fool to consider anyone other than Dell when I was looking to upgrade; so I went forth on my voyage of discovery - and found the Sony Vaio TX-series, and got completely disoriented! Follow the link and you’ll have a better idea of what I mean, and yet I can say with confidence that it’ll give you no sense of what it feels when you encounter the aforementioned machine face-to-face!

The only word that can describe the Vaio TX37 is - sexy! Incredibly sleek, and weighing a mind-boggling 1.3 kg, with an internal DVD-RW drive. The display is magnificent, though the screen is reflective, which can be irritating at times. By this time, I’d already begun negotiations with Dell for the D420 and then came the sock on the jaw - the price difference between the machines was a huge 35000-rupees on the base price! And then Dell comes with a 3-year on-site warranty but Sony comes with only a 1-year carry-in….. to make that 3-years would cost another 10000-rupees! And that felt like a whole lot too much….. you can buy a perfectly respectable extra laptop for the price difference! Apart from other technical differences - the Vaio was Centrino-solo, while the Latitude was a Centrino-duo; the technical comparisons across the Web spoke of the amazing value-for-money of the Latitude…. and the incredible sexiness of the Vaio!! And so the decision was made, though I must confess that the Vaio continued to exert a fierce tug on my heart-strings! :o)

And so it is that I’ve come to be using a Latitude D420 for the last 1-year. When it was delivered, the first thing that struck me was how stodgy it looked even without comparing it to the Vaio. Then the second shock - the optical drive came in a D-dock, as opposed to the earlier D-bay…… which FYI means that every time I need the DVD-drive, I’ve got to dock the laptop into a base-unit that weighs almost as much as the laptop again!! I admit now that I came this close to abandoning the Latitude and scooting to the Vaio. Personally, I’d say that the D-bay is a better bet, weighs less, and is far more portable when you’re traveling. So you may want to keep that in mind in case you’re ordering this machine. The D-dock also pushes the machine up my a good 1-inch, so you’ve got to readjust to the altitude.

The funny part was that the Dell India gang didn’t seem to know that the D420 could use the D-bay….. I still had access to the X300’s d-bay, and found that it worked just fine. Called Dell to order one, for use when I travel, convinced them that it worked and I’d checked - and then got blown away by the price - about 14000-rupees for a DVD-RW! Settled for a LaCie external instead, though that too had a pretty steep price-tag. Incidentally, the LaCie doesn’t seem to get along too well with the D420…. keep having problems getting the drive recognized, though when it finally does, things seem to work just fine.

Dell has also gone and changed the trackpad vendor - from Synaptics in the X300 to Alps in the D420; and this has been a bad move IMHO. The Synaptics touchpad was so much more responsive, and offered much better features and functionality than the present choice…. even after a year, I still get irritated with my trackpad every now and then, and have to keep playing with the settings.

And a suggestion to Dell - the standard model ships with a 4-cell battery-pack which is just too frivolous in this day and age, with a measly 1-hour or so of life, that too without any media playing. In comparison, the Vaio claims to provide a staggering 7+ hours of battery life. I opted to upgrade to the 6-cell battery, which gives me about 2-3 hours of battery backup, though this pushed the weight of the machine up by about 300 gms.

My final grouse with the Latitude D420, which was a problem even with the X300 - the portion where the base of your palm rests, i.e. the area to the right of the track-pad seems to be where the heat-sink sits, so in anything other than an air-conditioned room, that part of the machine starts getting uncomfortably warm. After about half-hour of working, I need to keep rubbing my palm, as it feels uncomfortable. And this is true for the base of the machine too - starts cooking your thighs. I’m sure this would be a value-add in colder climes, but in India all that I can say is that you’ll soon want something between the laptop and your right thigh.

So what do I feel about the Dell Latitude D420 after 1-year of using the machine? Well, I’ve gotten comfortable with her, and no longer feel the tug of the Vaio…. well, I still do, but nowhere as strongly as before. Partly due to some of the things that I’ve done to make things more comfortable for me - like having an extra power adapter and an additional external DVD-RW drive, so I don’t have to carry these around between office and home, just pop the laptop into my haversack and I’m ready to go.

And in little part due to the fact that Sony still hasn’t upgraded the Vaio TX line - the spec remains the same even after a year, and that’s not a good feeling. Particularly considering the really neat models that have been rolling out from HP-Compaq, which are really pushing the ultra-portable envelope.

And that brings me to the whole point of this posting - why does Dell have such stodgy designs? Strangely enough, the X300 still looks sleeker and slicker than the D420, which seems to be a throwback to IBM and the HP of yore. So what if its a ‘corporate’ machine, silver is so much sleeker than black, so why not give me a choice? And this becomes a complete whammy when you have to choose between the Latitude & the Vaio. So let me leave you with my parting thought - my next laptop will be a Vaio TX! ;o)