The D800 has a magnesium alloy body that is supposed to protect the laptop from flexing and the wear-and-tear of corporate travel and use. dell laptop Battery The whole underside and lid of the laptop feel like metal but, unfortunately, the wrist rests are plastic. Thus, there is some amount of flex when handling that area but by no means is the amount of flex disturbing. The rest of the notebook, however, is very rigid.
Screen
The screen is most likely the Achilles heel of the D800, if it has one. The screen is 15.4″ diagonal and is matte, not glossy. The trend in most consumer notebooks is towards the glossy screens which feature vivid colors and higher brightness for the benefit of gaming, movie-watching, and photo-viewing. Most business machines, however, still come with the old-style matte screens which are more suited for office rather than multimedia tasks. Unfortunately, the D800’s matte screen is not very bright and the higher brightness settings drain the battery quickly..Latitude D830 battery, MM165 battery, YD626 battery, 312-0393 battery, Latitude D800 battery, A cool feature is the automatic light-sensor which adjusts screen brightness based on ambient light conditions. MM165 This is useful when running on battery power or when using the notebook in different settings but I ended up turning this feature off because it oftentimes results in an unacceptably dim screen.
My D800 came with the WSXGA+ (1680×1050) screen. The other options were the base WXGA+ (1280×800) screen and the ultra-high resolution WUXGA (1900×1200). I am used to the WSXGA+ resolution on my Dell monitor and I chose it because I thought it was a good balance between screen real estate and legibility of fonts and icons. I could have gone with the highest resolution option and increased the Windows DPI and font sizes (indeed the WSXGA+ and WUXGA models ship with 120 DPI setting out of the box) but browsers and other applications do not always adhere to Windows settings. I changed the 120DPI setting to 96DPI because it made Windows fonts too large and screwed up graphics on web pages. I think I made the right choice here because the WUXGA display would have yielded fonts and icons too small for even my young eyes.
Sound & Multimedia
It is no secret that laptop speakers are bad. They usually feature tinny sound, distorted highs, and nonexistent bass. The Latitude D800’s speakers are no exception though admittedly not the worst I’ve heard. The D800 (dell inspiron 1520 battery )being a business machine, I didn’t expect any better. At least on the D800 you get stereo sound with a speaker on either side of the keyboard; on its cousin the Latitude D620 there is but one speaker. The volume is adequate for me but I don’t like to listen to music at high volumes. Using Sennheiser HD-202 headphones plugged into the side-mounted headphone jack, the sound improves significantly and is clear,YD626 accurate, and mostly distortion-free. The sound subsystem on the D800 is controlled by the Sigmatel audio chipset.
The D800 provides just volume control and mute buttons above the keyboard as opposed to the various media buttons found on most consumer laptops. While not absolutely necessary on a business notebook,.Latitude D830 battery, MM165 battery, YD626 battery, 312-0393 battery, Latitude D800 battery, it would have been nice to have a few more control buttons like play, pause, etc. for controlling Windows Media Player, PowerDVD, or WinAmp.
Processor & Graphics Performance
My D800 came with a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor and by all measures it’s a speed demon. I choose two 512MB sticks (total 1GB) to take advantage of dual channel memory capability which in theory doubles the bandwidth of the pipe from the RAM to the memory controller. I also chose the 667MHz RAM over the standard 533MHz. I wasn’t sure of the utility of this faster memory but my logic was that the Core Duo has a 667MHz front side bus and I would need the RAM to match that speed if I were to maximize performance. Startup times on my D800 (dell inspiron b120 battery )(dell inspiron b130 battery)are fast but not as fast as I expected. The machine takes 28.34 seconds to reach the login screen from a cold boot. Thus far the laptop has been snappy in every day usage such as internet browsing and word processing as well as during benchmarking. Applications load quickly as do Control Panel and My Computer and there’s a good degree of responsiveness to all user inputs. I have not had a single hang, lockup, freeze, or BSOD so far. I haven’t installed any games on this machine so I cannot attest to the performance of the Quadro NVS 120 graphics solution, the workstation version of NVIDIA’s consumer GeForce 7400 graphics solution. Do not expect stellar game performance out this card however my D800 received 670 3DMarks on the 3DMark06 benchmark.
Heat & Noise
For the most part I was very pleased by the amount of heat and noise emitted by the D800 (dell inspiron e1705 battery ). 312-0393 When idling or performing everyday tasks the fan speed is very slow resulting in relatively silent computing. When performing more demanding tasks (such as during the Battery Eater Pro burn-in and battery life test or rendering 3D graphics) the fan speeds up but it is not at all offensive. The only caveat is the Philips DVD-RW drive. Compared to the rest of the notebook, it sounds like a turbofan engine spooling up when it reads a CD or DVD. Moreover, the drive is not well damped causing the whole notebook body to shudder as the drive spins.
Dell has designed the D800 for excellent heat dissipation. There are two exhaust vents: one on the side and one on the rear. The left wrist rest heats up a tiny bit after a long period of operation and the right wrist rest stays completely cool throughout. Touching the underside of the laptop after the ~2 hour Battery Eater Pro stress test I found that the laptop was warm but certainly not hot enough to preclude lap-top usage for an extended period of time. The power brick stays cool even after days of keeping the notebook plugged into the wall.Latitude D830 battery, MM165 battery, YD626 battery, 312-0393 battery, Latitude D800 battery, In short, Dell has done a superb job of managing the heat emitted by the D800’s high performance components.
Conclusion
In summary, the Latitude D800 is a very nice choice for the desk jockey professional or student. This machine, with its 15.4″ widescreen, is not meant for world travel but for flexibility, productivity, and a little bit of portability. At a pinch it can be used on a plane or on a lap but, for the most part, Latitude D800 I would not travel extensively with the D800. For its form factor, however, I do not think you will find a better balance between portability and build quality than the Latitude D800. I would wholeheartedly recommend this notebook to anyone looking for an effective tool to get some serious work done.
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