Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Dell Latitude E4300 Review


The Dell Latitude E4300

The Pros:
  • A nice purchase if you are ok with the cons below (my purchase price: $350 on Ebay) 
  • Nice optional features – backlit keyboard, webcam, Bluetooth 
  •  Nice 13.3” LCD 
  •  Very portable and light weight
The Cons:
  • Audio isn’t great 
  • Integrated graphics 
  • No hdmi output
This is my review of the Dell Latitude E4300 model laptop.  This laptop screams portability!  It is the perfect size.  Not too small to where you have to adjust to a tiny keyboard and weighs a lot less than the average laptop.  It is also a great performer, customizable to 8gb of memory and stocked with the Intel Core 2 Duo SP9600 (2.53GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB).  The battery life wasn’t as great as I expected.  The built-in speaker system is sub-par which I was most disappointed with.

The Bottom line: This laptop is a good buy if you aren’t looking to do any gaming or heavy audio listening through the laptop speakers.  If you are looking for a nice portable business grade laptop look no further.  The more portable and lightweight the more expensive laptops tend to be.  This one is good for the price if you buy used.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Dell Latitude E6400 Review


The Dell Latitude E6400

The Pros:
  • Good bang for your buck if buy used (my purchase price: $300 on Ebay)
  • Nice optional features – backlit keyboard, webcam, Bluetooth
  • Nice battery life 
  • Runs Windows 7 great
The Cons:
  • A bit on the heavy side for my liking
  • The brush black lid is prone to scratches
  • No hdmi output
This is my review of the Dell Latitude E6400 model laptop.  This business grade laptop is nothing fancy on the outside but is a great performer for the business man or the individual owner.  Mine is stocked with the Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 @ 2.53 GHz which is more than enough power for any computing that I do.  Which the option for 8 gig of ram what more do you need?  There are a few features that I would love to have like an hdmi output and it to be a bit lighter in weight but I’ll spend the additional $300 on something else to make up for it.

My company has over 20 of this particular model and I own one personally.  I’ve had one issue in a little over two years with this model.  After reading a few forums I found the issue to be the CPU overheating causing the laptop to freeze.  When turned on immediately following this, the laptop wouldn’t recognize the hard drive.  After reading further, I discovered that the problem was solved by removing the heat sink and reattaching it to the CPU.  Bam, problem solved.

The Bottom line: This laptop is a good buy.  Here’s why.  You can pick one of these up for around $275 fully loaded from Ebay if you don’t mind having a little scratched up lid(replaceable for $14 on Ebay) and no comfort of a warranty.