The Dell Latitude D820

The Latitude D820 demonstrates best-in-business laptop design, beginning with its broad, comfortable keyboard that's complemented by a pointing stick and a touch pad, both with their own sets of mouse buttons. If you configure your D820 with biometric security, Dell reduces the size of the mouse buttons to accommodate a fingerprint sensor between them; while we appreciate the sensor option, the accompanying buttons may be too small for big fingers to use comfortably. Three handy buttons for volume up, volume down, and mute lie above the keyboard, while the two mediocre-sounding speakers (typical for a corporate laptop) flank the board on either side.

We evaluated a high-end version of the Latitude D820 that costs $2,290--a good value for such top-notch components, including a top-of-the-line 2.16GHz Intel T2600 Core Duo processor, 1GB of blazing 666MHz DDR2 SDRAM, a big 100GB hard drive rotating at 5,400rpm, a swappable DVD burner, and a cutting-edge Nvidia Quadro NVS 120M graphics chip that has 256MB of dedicated VRAM and borrows another 256MB from main memory. The ThinkPad Z60t costs $300 less and offers the same hard drive capacity though several lesser specs (previous-generation Pentium M processor, slower 533MHz memory, and integrated Intel 915GM graphics).

The system also features a crisp, 15.4-inch wide screen with an ultrafine, 1,900x1,200 native resolution that renders graphics in good detail but makes for tiny text. The screen is anchored to the D820's base by very sturdy steel hinges, and the entire internal frame consists of strong magnesium alloy. In addition, the hard drive offers shock protection, meant to shield the drive from accidental bumps and drops. Many of these fab features are also be found in the SOHO-focused Lenovo ThinkPad Z60t, which offers a smaller 14.1-inch wide screen and nice touches that the business-minded D820 lacks, such as arrow keys that double as multimedia controls.

The D820 has a basic set of management utilities and a fingerprint reader, which ties into the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) hardware solution. Both are managed by Wave's Embassy Security Center, along with Wave's long list of security settings. The suite is challenging to use and set up at times, and separate downloads are required for extensions to the suite. Unlike Lenovo and HP, Dell doesn't provide built-in backup software, but you can download Altiris's backup solution for free.

SECURITY:

Physical Security: Cable Lock Slots, Media Module and Hard Drive Locks.
User & System Security: Integrated Smart Card Reader, Trusted Platform Module 1.2 and optional UPEKTM finger print reader. Wave Embassy® Trust Suite by Wave Systems security software.
Network Security: 802.11 WiFi Protected Access (WPA), 802.11i (WPA2), Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and 802.1x with EAP modes and compatible with CCX 4.0

Specs for Dell Latitude D820

Screen Size	15.4" WUXGA w/ X @ 1920x1200
Processor Type	2.16GHz Intel Core Duo T2600
Processor Speed	2.16-GHz
Bus Speed	667 Mhz
Hard Drive Capacity	Fujitsu MHV2100BH 100GB 5,400rpm
Installed Memory	1GB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM (4 max)
RAM Type	DDR2 SDRAM
Resolution	1920x1200
Video Card Type	Nvidia Quadro NVS 120M 512MB
Primary Optical Drive	8X DVD+R/8X DVD-R write speed
Bundled Os	Windows XP Professional
Weight	6.5 pounds
Motherboard Chipset	-
Networking Connection	Intel Pro/Wireless 3945 WiFi 802.11 a/b/g,
Average Battery Life	3 hours (6-cell battery ) 6 (9-cell battery)
Price	About $2.000 - $2.300

You can get the D820 with over Five hours (yes, 5 hours) of battery life — bringing Dell’s Latitude D820 into the same spectrum as other high-end business class laptops. Dell’s transformation of the Latitude lineup only makes it more competitive against the competition and adds much needed fresh air to Dell’s lineup. Stay tuned for our full review of the Dell Latitude D820.

The Dell Latitude D820 is a 15.4-inch widescreen business notebook equipped with the latest Intel Core Duo processor. The D820 replaces the D810 and provides quite an overhaul in both design change and internal components. The new industrial charcoal grey and black look of the D820 conveys its strong build, which Dell calls "Road Ready", and with a slew of available built-in wireless communications this notebook is road ready in more ways than one.

The Latitude D820 has a magnesium alloy construction on the lid and bottom of the notebook for extra protection. This means that the lid provides very good protection for the screen, you can push in on the back of the screen lid and not get any funky ripples on the LCD that you'll see with notebooks that are poorly constructed. The protection on the bottom is obviously good for safeguarding from drops and bumps when the notebook is being carried. The hard drive has shock absorbers so that during a drop situation there's a good chance your hard drive will survive and data is preserved.

Key Features of Dell Latitude D820

• 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo T2600
• This Latitude features Intel’s Core Duo Processor, further moving Dell’s aging product roadmap away from the Pentium M series to Intel’s latest.
• Dual Channel DDR2 Memory (With Two DIMMS, featuring a maximum of 4GB of memory).
• With the D820 we have the option to use either NVIDIA’s excellent Quadro NVS Graphics Cards (with the option of 256MB or 512MB of memory), or Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (GMA 950).
• Moving towards a wider aspect ratio, the Latitude D820 features widescreen, with your option of WUXGA, WSXGA+, and WXGA.
• Serial ATA (SATA) Support
• As we reported earlier, the Dell Latitude D820 will feature support for the GSM and CDMA networks in the USA (through Verizon and Cingular).
• Fingerprint Reader for increased security.

Notebook Specifications
Operating System	Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
Average Battery Life	4 hours (6-cell battery ) 7 (9-cell battery)
Processor
Processor Name	2.16GHz Intel Core Duo T2600
Processor Type	Intel Core Duo T2600
Processor Speed	2.16 GHz
Bus Speed	677 Mhz
Storage Drives
Hard Drive Capacity	Fujitsu MHV2100BH 100GB 5,400rpm
Ram
Installed Memory	1GB
RAM Type	DDR2 SDRAM
Motherboard
Motherboard Chipset	-
Display
Diagonal Screen Size	15.4" WUXGA w/ X @ 1920x1200
Screen Type	Transflective TFT (widescreen)
Maximum Resolution	1920x1200
Video Card
Video Card Type	Nvidia Quadro NVS 120M 512MB
Video Memory	256MB of dedicated VRAM and borrows another 256MB from main memory
Networking
Networking Connection Type	Intel® 3945 WiFi 802.11a/g, Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g, Dell Wireless 1490 802.11a/g Dual-Band Mini-Cards, Internal Bluetooth (optional), Dell Wireless 5500 Mobile Broadband 3G HSDPA (Cingular US), Dell Wireless 5700 Mobile Broadband CDMA EVDO (Verizon Wireless US)
Dimensions
Weight	6.5 lbs

The Dell Latitude D820

The Latitude D820 doesn't offer an overabundance of ports, jacks, and slots, but its collection is expansive enough to handle most office tasks. You get a four-pin FireWire (which was lacking in the D810), VGA, infrared, serial, and four USB 2.0 ports (one of which is half USB port and half power jack, letting you run peripherals such as Dell's USB external hard drive); 56Kbps modem, Gigabit Ethernet, headphone, and microphone jacks; and one slot each for Type II PC Cards, ExpressCards, and Smart Cards, the last of which can store passwords and other sensitive information. Along those security lines, the D820 also incorporates a Trusted Platform Module chip. While a more consumer-oriented laptop would incorporate multimedia features such as S-Video, S/PDIF audio, a media card reader, and more USB ports, the D820's selection is appropriate for a business user.

The hard drive technology used is SATA and you can configure up to a 100GB storage size hard drive. Hard drives with up to 7200RPM configurations are also available for those that want the increased performance you'll get from a faster spinning hard drive.

One very noticeable thing that made for better performance out of the box with the D820 was the very clean Windows install this machine has. Unlike many consumer notebooks where you have a bunch of junk software installed such as AOL, Earthlink and trial versions of every software application under the sun, the Latitude D820 contains the bare basics and very little software outside of Dell security application and a few management tools. This is great, it means far fewer unnecessary background processes running from what is essentially junkware and therefore much improved performance and boot times. In fact, one of the major advantages of purchasing a business notebook is that the manufacturer will refrain from installing too much 3rd party software.

We evaluated a high-end version of the Latitude D820 that costs $2,290--a good value for such top-notch components, including a top-of-the-line 2.16GHz Intel T2600 Core Duo processor, 1GB of blazing 666MHz DDR2 SDRAM, a big 100GB hard drive rotating at 5,400rpm, a swappable DVD burner, and a cutting-edge Nvidia Quadro NVS 120M graphics chip that has 256MB of dedicated VRAM and borrows another 256MB from main memory. The ThinkPad Z60t costs $300 less and offers the same hard drive capacity though several lesser specs (previous-generation Pentium M processor, slower 533MHz memory, and integrated Intel 915GM graphics).

Design and Build

The D820 is most interesting in that it adopts a widescreen format, a feature that hereto date really has been pushed more in the consumer channel of notebooks. Dell reckons that business-types will prefer this format too though. After all, a widescreen (available in WXGA and WXGA+ resolution) does allow you to more easily have two windows open next to each other at the same time. Side-by-side comparison of documents, web pages or spreadsheets is an example of common business tasks more easily done on a widescreen.

The Latitude D820 has a magnesium alloy construction on the lid and bottom of the notebook for extra protection. This means that the lid provides very good protection for the screen, you can push in on the back of the screen lid and not get any funky ripples on the LCD that you'll see with notebooks that are poorly constructed. The protection on the bottom is obviously good for safeguarding from drops and bumps when the notebook is being carried. The hard drive has shock absorbers so that during a drop situation there's a good chance your hard drive will survive and data is preserved.

Performance and Benchmarks

The Core Duo processor family has proven itself as a great performer in many past reviews on this site, and Dell is offering the higher end Core Duo processor options in the D820. Core Solo is not even an option for the D820 -- it's high octane gas only for this machine. The hard drive offerings are impressive, with the option of a 100GB 7200RPM hard drive available -- that's right at the cutting edge of notebook hard drives on the market today. If you're a fan of lots of system RAM, the max RAM of 4.0GB should make you smile. The system under review has 1.0GB of memory, which should be ample for most users, but if you think you need more then there's plenty of room to add it.

Let's look at some benchmarks to see how the D820 stacks up against fellow notebooks (all benchmarks are done using the stock system setup, no Windows reinstall or removal of programs).

Super Pi

Super Pi is a program that forces the notebook processor to calculate Pi to 2-million digits of accuracy. The D820 took 1m 11s to calcuate this value with its 2.13GHz Core Duo processor, here's how it stacked up to other notebooks:

To compare to older notebooks we ran PCMark04 on the Dell Latitude D820. It's a telling thing when a 12.1" screen notebook beats out the old Dell XPS 2 gaming notebook in an overall system performance test:

Battery

Instead of running battery benchmark tests I used a real world battery drain test.  At 100% charge I set the screen to half-brightness and pulled the plug on the Latitude D820.  I then performed various tasks such as downloading and installing Half Life 2 and playing it for a bit, surfing the web, downloading and installing 3DMark05, watching 15 minutes of a DVD, edited some photos for this review and also turned off wireless and just let the Latitude D820 idle for some time.  In doing all of this the 9-cell battery ran down to 7% charge and Windows shut the notebook down at 4h 15 mins of usage.  Since the Latitude D820 here is configured with a dedicated graphics card and faster processor and I left wi-fi on, that time isn't bad.  If you had integrated graphics, wi-fi off and set your screen brightness lower you could easily achieve 5.6 hours.  My test was pretty abusive in terms of using demanding programs while on battery power.

Screen

Moving towards a wider aspect ratio, the Latitude D820 features widescreen, with your option of WUXGA, WSXGA+, and WXGA and give you 15.4-inch wide screen with an ultrafine, 1,900x1,200 native resolution that renders graphics in good detail but makes for tiny text. The screen is anchored to the D820's base by very sturdy steel hinges, and the entire internal frame consists of strong magnesium alloy.

The D620 has a built-in ambient light sensor built-in that will control the screen brightness when on battery. For example, in a dark room the screen will dim as less brightness is needed to see the screen, but in bright light the screen will crank up in brightness so it is easier to see. When on power the screen will automatically become brighter. You can override the ambient light sensor to control brightness yourself of course.

As far as screen quality, the brightness is decent, but certainly not the best on the market and nowhere near as vivid as some of the high-end screens for consumer notebooks. It is a matte screen so you won't get any reflection from office lighting. There is some backlight leakage from the bottom and the overall picture is slightly washed out. Below are some pictures of the screen in the dark, notice the light leakage from the bottom on the all black Windows XP screensaver background.

Wireless Communications

Dell has pulled out all of the stops in making the Latitude D820 wireless capable. Here's a quick rundown of the wireless options:

• Wi-Fi Choices: Intel Pro/Wireless 3945 WiFi 802.11 a/b/g, Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g, Dell Wireless 1490 802.11a/g

• IrDA

• Bluetooth (Dell Wireless350 BlueTooth internal wireless card)

WWAN (Cellular Broadband internet access) Choices:

• Dell Wireless 5505 Mobile Broadband 3G HSDPA (Vodafone UK, France, Germany)

• Dell Wireless 5500 Mobile Broadband 3G HSDPA ( Cingular US)

• Dell Wireless 5700 Mobile Broadband CDMA EVDO ( Verizon WirelessUS)

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IrDA are all things we've seen in the past with the D810 of course, the broadband cellular communication addition to the Latitude D820 is new and much welcomed. Dell provides the option of configuring your Latitude D820 with an internal antenna for either EVDO or HSPDA, depending on the region you live in and cellular provider you have. My review unit Latitude D820 came configured with the Dell Wireless 5700 EVDO modem. I love the fact that there's no ugly side antenna or extra humps on the notebook where the antenna sticks out as just about every other WWAN equipped notebook uses (such as the ThinkPad T60 or Sony VAIO TX). Rather, Dell puts the antenna in the screen and the Latitude D820 looks the same whether do or don't have the WWAN option.

EVDO via Verizon is a real treat, if you have an existing Verizon wireless account it's $60 a month for unlimited data transfer and if you don't then the cost is $80 a month. You also have the option of paying $15 for 24 hour access to the Verizon EVDO network. If you're a highly mobile worker EVDO can be a real blessing and keep you from fretting about where you'll find the next hotspot to send/receive email or connect to your corporate intranet from the field. As we know, when you don't need a wi-fi hotspot they're all around, but when you need a hotspot to access the net and help land a critical business deal the trail goes cold.

Speaking of finding wireless hotspots, Dell has included a unique feature called "Wi-Fi Catcher" located on the left side of the notebook. You can use this switch to turn off all wireless radios by putting it in the Off position, but far cooler than that, push it all the way forward and it will blink green as it searches for a Wi-Fi network and if one is present it glows solid green, if none is found it shows orange. This Wi-Fi Catcher works whether the notebook is on, off or in standby mode. So there's no need to boot up and search for wireless networks, just push this button to find out.

Conclusion

The Latitude D820 is a very welcome upgrade to the D810 offering many improvements, especially in terms of performance and security, and the look and build quality are also much improved. The widescreen approach is interesting for a business notebook, I think it makes sense and probably will be well received. It's very apparent that Dell is excited about this new line of Latitudes (D620, D420) and have gone out of their way in regards to testing the notebook and getting feedback from customers on what they want. So thumbs up on the D820, if you're a business worker or just someone that wants a notebook for productivity purposes and don't need a bunch of bells and whistles media features, the D820 is a very well built and good option for you.

Pros :

• Very good overall performance, snappy with the Core Duo and availability for large amount of RAM (up to 4GB) and a very clean Windows install without a ton of unwanted software means better performance

• Excellent build and construction via the all over mag-alloy case

• Widescreen format offers greater viewing area, easier to view side-by-side documents especially with WXGA+ format

• Great security via biometrics and security software suite

• Super connectivity, especially with option for EVDO or HSPDA cellular broadband built-in

Cons :

• Would have been nice to have a seperate Express Card 54 slot for future proofing

• Multimedia card reader or SD card reader would have been nice to have

• No S-Video or DVI-D ports, but not exactly expected for a business notebook

• Screen is slightly washed out and slight amount of backlight leakage at the bottom
  
   

Video:    80 Out of 100
Gaming: 80 Out of 100
Music:   80 Out of 100
Photo:   80 Out of 100
Value:   85 Out of 100
Design: 80 Out of 100
Mobility: 73 Out of 100
Security: 87 Out of 100

Total Score: 80.62 Out of 100 (Spectacular)