Dell Latitude e6420 true review Part 1

Are you tired of looking at many reviews before buying something and then after buying it you find out there is nothing true in these reviews. Here is the whole truth about Dell Latitude e6420 laptop. My model specifications: CPU: i5-2540M, 2.6GHz RAM: 4GB samsung replaced with 2x4GB Kingston (just wanted to have 2 of the same type) Display: 1600x900 display resolution, non-touch Hard disk: Seagate 500 GB (seagate made me feel sory for my choise many times) Bluetooth: Widcom bluetooth module Wifi: Intel Centrino LAN: Intel Gigabit No finger print webcam: yes Battery: 6 cell 60W/h Adapter: 90W I'll start with the fake/delusive specs from Dell. First of all the weight is 2.039 kg without batteries and DVD (media drive bay) ... well with 2 x4GB ram. They say "basic setup" which should mean with lightest battery and DVD. My laptop configuration weights 2.5 kg with battery and drive bay on (why would anyone want to measure it without these). It's good however that they have included the CPU and cooler when measured weight - it would have been a very bad surprise... But I'm ok with weight. It's a few grams heavier than my Latitude D630, but that's because magnesium alloy case. The problem is that when I read the specification I say to myself "It's metal case and yet lighter than the others" - that's the delusion. A good company should not sell their products with lies, but with quality. I would have bought it either way, but now my trust in dell is gone. Yes, metal case! Who wouldn't be happy to have magnesium alloy case for his laptop. That's a good thing. I'm trully happy with this decision of Dell. It feels solid, it doesn't bend and sharp objects won't damage the display that easily from outside. The laptop is not ugly! I've read all over the net that this laptop is disgusting, awful looking ... That's not true. It has nice, clean design, it's not shiny as the cheap laptops sold for generic home users. Design is just fine. The only problem I find is that compared to Latitude D630 it's a lot easier to leave fingerprints on it. Or to be more precise, the fingerprints are a lot easier to see. A metalic-looking coating like D630 would make these fingerprints hard to see. I was warried that the touch pad is moved too much to the left. It is centered between the G and H letters which is (theoretically) the perfect spot for typing, however I'm not 100% sure that's the case. It might have been moved just a little bit to the right - 5 to 10 mm. In most cases it's used by the right hand and I have the feeling that I touch it by mistake with my left hand more often than with the right hand. Still - it's fine. It should be in the center of letters, not in the center of keyboard. The armrest is not rubber!!! I've read a lot of reviews saying that it feels like rubber. I have a mouse, an mp3 player and an umbrella with rubber coating. The armrest of Dell Latitude e6420 is something completely different. Although it has something similar with rubber, it doesn't make that much of friction when you move your arms. I was warried a lot that it'll feel bad. And it doesn't seam so easy to remove. The time will show, but I think the armrest material is perfect. I don't use the pointing stick often. I can't comment on it, but it has 3 buttons! Every one would like to have middle button on a laptop. The touchpad softure has some good features - the two finger scrolling is great. I completely turned off the side scroll area on touch pad. The two finger scroll completely replaces it. The zooming is also not that bad, but depends on what you are zooming. The multifinter (3) gestures are bad - I turned it off. The display is fine. I can't say that it's good - compared to my desktop Samsung monitor(s) it looks bad. I'm not sure exactly what is his problem (other than the small viewing angle), but I've never seen a Latitude laptop with good monitor. It's better than D630 though - it has higher contrast. It's good that drivers are not needed to set monitor brightness. It works like charm - like it did on D630. The drivers support from dell (and Intel too) really sucks if you want to use Windows XP. It gets even harder if you want to use windows XP x64. You would say why would I want to use old windows like XP. I won't comment because it's a whole long story, but XP is not old simply because there is no any windows newer than it. There have been only attempts to make newer windows and Windows 7 is still not a real OS. It's more like a joke. I might write a detiled guide how to install XP drivers becuase it took me 3 days (and nights). The NVidia Optimus on XP is still bad. With just a little tweak they could have made it turn on/off from the BIOS. Yes, there is an option in BIOS to enable/disable optimus, but when you disable it you can't use Intel Graphics (diver doesn't install). So, enable it and then install driver. The checkbox in BIOS will automatically uncheck itself after first boot, but driver will work. I'm not sure what state should Optimus be if you want to install NVidia Driver. I'll keep playing. Even though it's buggy I think you can use graphics just fine with XP. I don't know if it's issue with my laptop only or it's common but the 2 usbs on the right are really tight. I almost broke a cable trying to unplug it. with 2 days of using it they got a bit loose, but still not enough. I'm affraid I'll break something. I'll leave XP drivers guide, heat and battery benchmarks for later. I won't do performance review because it's specific to hardware used. A dell for $1200 would be as fast as acer for $500 with the same hardware.You do performance tests on hardware not on the laptop model itself. I think the laptop is great. The lack of XP support is bad and it's about $100-150 more expensive than it should be.