Latitude E6420 - any expected date?

Competing models from HP and Toshiba (Elitebook and Tecra) have already made the switch to 16:9 on their 14.0" models. Both models offer a 1600x900 upgrade, so I'm sure Dell will offer the same.

 

It would be better if Dell reversed the trend.

 

It's indeed a shame that the Dell Latitude c610 and Inspiron 4100 used to have 14.1" 1600x1200. Ten years later, the best that we can get on a 14" screen is 1600x900.

 

Well people scream for faster and cheaper laptops, so one way to cheap out is going to 16:9 screens. And not every 14" laptop will offer it, it got dropped off the Envy 14 and the dm4 (not like I'd ever buy a consumer grade notebook).

 

Manufacturers continually try to cut costs. And unfortunately (though this may not be a negative depending on your perspective) in the last decade notebook PCs have gone from being high-end tools for business to being ubiquitous consumer items. And since most consumers seem to drool over "OMG HD screen for movies", the high-end business notebooks that remain end up with design compromises. However, what still bothers me is that Apple can put an incredible 4:3 screen on the iPad, yet noone offers a notebook PC with such a screen anymore. Apple clearly has a source for the screens, so why can't Dell, HP, and Lenovo follow suit?

 

Hi!

I am desperately waiting for the Latitude E6420 too, but today it was confirmed that Intel has problems with a fault in its Sandy Bridge chipset (link). This might cause delays in the shipping of mainboards for laptops too.

I propably take a E6410 instead of waiting till May or June for the successor, eh?

Cheers

Matthias

 

It really depends on what you are doing with your laptop. If you just do light office work then the E6410 is more than enough. If you do heavy work (though on a 14" is lol), yes you will greatly benefit from the SB refresh as it offers faster speeds at the same price points, more potent IGP and better battery life.

 

Thanks for your thought! I think both laptops are a great update from my XPS M1330, and yes I do use my laptop for "heavy" work, mostly video editing related (using an external monitor), which takes its toll hardware wise. It's rather a question of when the E6420 is gonna be introduced and if the performance boost compared to the E6410 is expected to be a landslide.

Matthias

 

Well I wouldn't continue to do heavy work on the M1330 due to the already bad heat issues with that laptop, doing so will probably lead to the infamous Nvidia black screen o'death or artifacts.

Yes it sounds like you would greatly benefit from Sandy Bridge over the older Core 2 Architecture you are on right now. SB processors have already shown the greatly outperform today's Clarksfield/Arrandale processors, though the full potential (benchmarking, testing battery life) has yet to be tested as SB just came out.

As it was discovered a few days ago, Intel's SATA controller on the 6 series motherboards developed a fault and ALL 6x series chipsets sold during the initial launch of Sandy Bridge were to be recalled to Intel. However this should only have a few weeks delay on ordering, but we will see, as nothing is concrete yet.

 

Again thanks for your thoughts! The famous NVidia GPU failure I experienced a couple of times actually, but the last mainboard they used (all on warranty withing one work day by a technician coming to my home) must have had an updated version of that GPU since for the last 1,5 years it never happened again. This problem did not cause me to not like my laptop actually, since the service always was beyond excellent.

But I want a new laptop nevertheless : )

Original release date for the E6420 was supposed to be end march beginning april (according to rumors in this forum). This SB bug might delay that for at least another month... Worst case the new Latitudes MIGHT be introduced not before june, july. I think i'd rather go for the E6410 now. There is always gonna be a "next" generation, eh? ; )

Cheers

Matthias