Gigantopithecus
Diamond Member
I've started bringing my laptop to school more these past few months and my previous notebook was too heavy, so I decided to buy an ultraportable. After reading the reviews here, I checked out the IBM X60 series but they were simply out of my price range (which was less than $1,200.).
So, I picked up a Latitude D420 from the Dell Outlet (previously ordered new) for just over a grand shipped. It has the 1.2ghz Core Duo ULV Yonah core in it, as well as a 60gb 4200rpm 1.8" hdd, 1gb of ram, & a 6 cell battery. It came with an integrated 1390 wifi card & SD card reader as well as a auto/air ac adapter. It also came with Dell's standard 3 year mail-in warranty. I use this primarily for document creation, database design, and number crunching/data analysis - so I didn't need anything fancy specwise.
I've had it for about two weeks now, and I really like it. It feels very rugged with its magnesium alloy case, but I have no intention of testing that. I was skeptical of the widescreen display since I don't like widescreen monitors for my desktops, but I do really like it on this laptop for size considerations (it's nearly identical in dimensions to a textbook & fits in my backpack nicely). I get excellent battery life with it, a bit more than 5 hours of web browsing & document creation on a full charge. Most of all, I like the fact that it weighs 3lbs 2oz.
Performance-wise, I've run a number of synthetic benchmarks (SuperPi to 2 million digits was just under 2 minutes), but more importantly, I noticed no real slowdown from my desktop when it comes to basic usage like browsing & document creation. It is noticeably slower than my desktop when it comes to opening & crunching really large datasets, but that's unavoidable, I think, for a system that runs at 1.2ghz & has a 4200rpm hard drive. That said, it's not intolerably slow. A friend of mine recently bought an HP dv2120us (I think that's the model, it has one of the dual core Turion cpus in it) from Circuit City; she paid roughly the same amount for her notebook & mine runs laps around hers in terms of performance (it also came with a better battery, is lighter, but hers also has a webcam & optical drive).
All in all, I really like this notebook. It has excellent battery life, is very light, seems durable & well-constructed, came with a 3 year warranty, acceptable performance for non-power usage, and is very light (did I mention it's very light?). It looks like you can pick up similarly spec'd units from the Dell Outlet for about what I paid. If you can't afford an X60, the D420 is a viable option.
So, I picked up a Latitude D420 from the Dell Outlet (previously ordered new) for just over a grand shipped. It has the 1.2ghz Core Duo ULV Yonah core in it, as well as a 60gb 4200rpm 1.8" hdd, 1gb of ram, & a 6 cell battery. It came with an integrated 1390 wifi card & SD card reader as well as a auto/air ac adapter. It also came with Dell's standard 3 year mail-in warranty. I use this primarily for document creation, database design, and number crunching/data analysis - so I didn't need anything fancy specwise.
I've had it for about two weeks now, and I really like it. It feels very rugged with its magnesium alloy case, but I have no intention of testing that. I was skeptical of the widescreen display since I don't like widescreen monitors for my desktops, but I do really like it on this laptop for size considerations (it's nearly identical in dimensions to a textbook & fits in my backpack nicely). I get excellent battery life with it, a bit more than 5 hours of web browsing & document creation on a full charge. Most of all, I like the fact that it weighs 3lbs 2oz.
Performance-wise, I've run a number of synthetic benchmarks (SuperPi to 2 million digits was just under 2 minutes), but more importantly, I noticed no real slowdown from my desktop when it comes to basic usage like browsing & document creation. It is noticeably slower than my desktop when it comes to opening & crunching really large datasets, but that's unavoidable, I think, for a system that runs at 1.2ghz & has a 4200rpm hard drive. That said, it's not intolerably slow. A friend of mine recently bought an HP dv2120us (I think that's the model, it has one of the dual core Turion cpus in it) from Circuit City; she paid roughly the same amount for her notebook & mine runs laps around hers in terms of performance (it also came with a better battery, is lighter, but hers also has a webcam & optical drive).
All in all, I really like this notebook. It has excellent battery life, is very light, seems durable & well-constructed, came with a 3 year warranty, acceptable performance for non-power usage, and is very light (did I mention it's very light?). It looks like you can pick up similarly spec'd units from the Dell Outlet for about what I paid. If you can't afford an X60, the D420 is a viable option.
