Dell Latitude D620

by Martin
(Germany)

Since 2008 I've owned a Dell Latitude D620 - back then not a too low end machine featuring a 2GHz dual core Intel CPU T7200, equipped with 2GB of RAM.

The screen features a resolution of 1440x900 with a visible diagonal of around 36cm. There's a slot-in DVD burner which can be interchanged with an additional add on battery pack, making the laptop last long hours. Unfortunately that extra battery did bloat up during a period of not using the laptop, giving me some trouble to remove it from the slot.

What's really lovely about the laptop next to its running time is the keyboard design, which despite minor flaws is an excellent one to use: Shift, Enter and Backspace keys are wide and not to get missed, cursor keys are dedicated and easy to find. The power button is located above the keyboard, so after closing the lid there's no chance you might push it by accident.

The laptop is silent and does not get hot compared to some of the new laptops out there. The keyboard itself will warm up a bit over time, which is not unpleasant.

With a non standard Samsung hard disk drive throughput is up to around 70 MB/s, which still makes it fun to work with the laptop.

It features a track point known from Thinkpad and Lenovo laptops in addition to the touchpad, the latter one not too pleasant to use. A double set of left and right "mouse" buttons located under and over the touchpad makes clicking really comfortable.

There's 4 USB ports, to on the right side, 2 on the rear side;
1x PCMCIA, 1x micro in, 1x headset out on the left side, Broadcom Gigabit network adapter port on the back as well as serial port and VGA out. I'd prefer to have the ethernet port on the laptop side instead.

It features an Intel 3945ABG wireless adapter and an Intel Media Accelerator 950 graphics card, both of which can be used under Linux, too.

All in all it's a pretty solid workhorse and and well worth the price invested. Do not expect any 3D magic these days and if you want something to carry around all day you might consider going for the newer netbooks, because as solid this is, as unlightweight as it gets.

There were different configurations for the D620 models, so be sure to check what you've got in front of you!