Dell Latitude E6500 Laptop
Posted on February 15, 2009
The Dell Latitude E6500 15.4” Laptop is a business laptop which comes with an attractive price tag and promises great performance. It is highly configurable. However, the more the manual configuration, the more the price.
This laptop is equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz processor, a 3MB L2 cache and 1GB of RAM. More powerful processors can be opted for, with additional cost. The screen resolution presented is 1280 x 800 pixels, which gives fine clarity to the display. This laptop has a professional look and feel with its black case and silver edge. This rugged mobile PC measures 35.8cm by 25.7cm by 3.3cm and weighs 2.3kg. The keyboard consists of the regular QWERTY layout with highly responsive keys. Volume control and muting keys are available too. A touchpad with 2 mouse buttons and a pointing stick are featured as well for providing input to this mobile computer.
A keyboard backlight and a sensor for adjusting screen brightness are present too. This keyboard backlight adjusts keyboard lighting according to the surrounding light. The screen brightness sensor also senses ambient lighting and alters display brightness relatively. Both of these can be disabled for manual adjusting. A fingerprint reader is also available for security purposes.
The operating system compatible with this laptop is Windows Vista Home Basic version. Intel GMA X4500HD graphics software is present as well. This mobile PC is Wi-fi capable too. Its’ SATA hard drive has a capacity of 80GB and a speed of 5,400rpm. For an additional price, you can opt for a web-cam also which can work in conjunction with Dell’s native web-cam software, to capture photographs that are clear. This software provides face tracking feature as well.
A line up of connections are offered by this portable computer too, which include a flash card reader, an Express Card slot, a VGA connector, an eSATA port, a PC Card slot, a FireWire port, 3 USB ports, microphone and headphone jacks and an RJ-45 Ethernet connector. The rugged, durable, Dell Latitude E6500 WiFi Ready Laptop, definitely ensures high performance to meet the requirements of business professionals.
I understand that many early purchasers of the E6500 have run into wireless and OS problems, and I can’t quibble with their resulting negative assessments; but I really wonder about others who make complaints about the overall design, weight and feel of using this laptop.
What I can say for certain is that the E6500 has a wonderful keyboard. The touch is light but not mushy, with precise feedback to the fingers. The surfaces of keys, palm rests and touch pad have a very agreeable silken smoothness. The machine (w/ P8400 & integrated graphics) runs very cool, but if you’re in a tropical climate you will feel some warmth due to the conductivity of the metal surfaces.
Touch pad is not as big as some, but definitely more spacious than the Lenovo R500, and quite responsive. One minor drawback is that touch pad is easily triggered during typing, and since there’s no quick way to turn off the tapping function, I find I need to keep tapping turned off. The trackpoint is not quite as well implemented as on Lenovo, but still quite functional (beware that trackpoint also has a tapping feature, which you may want to turn off if your typing fingers are sloppy like mine).
The 1440×900 LED-backlit screen is likewise superb, with more brightness than you’re ever likely to need indoors. It is matte, not glossy. Some have complained that the auto adjustment of brightness is useless. I find it works better some times than others, but that in any case it is very easy to toggle it off and on, and to manually adjust brightness.
I’m not expert on computer innards and operating systems, nor have I tried any performance benchmarks, but there’s no doubt that this machine, w/ XP and 2G of ram is very snappy. What I find especially remarkable and useful is the speed with which it goes into and out of hibernation — much faster than an identically spec’ed Lenovo. It also has great battery life — 6, 7 hours, even more, if you have the 9-cell and shut down all the extra power drains. The 12-cell slice is well designed, and attaches securely to the underside of the computer, but it is expensive and makes for one rather heavy, bulky laptop!
Yes, the 9-cell protrudes out the back, and no, it’s not the very lightest 15-incher out there, but I very much doubt you’ll find anything lighter or slimmer that does not also run hotter.
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