Dell Latitude Z series

Yes, but the Samsung 256GB SSD is not what a "technical geek" would call top-of-the-line. Speeds are about 200MB/s seq reads if I remember. So, that $700-$800 range is a bit high. I think closer to $500.

Regardless, you're right, it's stunning at that price. Unbelievable. Yet, many are not buying them. Not sure why??

Now, if they just fix that damn trackpad!

 

That sums up precisely the reason we got them for such a great price

 

I can't get the ambient light sensor to work ?

Please Help

 

To be fair, Latitude Z was never meant to be an "everyman's business notebook," it's intended to be the "halo" product for Dell's business line, aimed at the people who can say they want a Z over the standard corporate issued E6400. (read CEO's and president's of companies)

 

I am a corporate CTO who uses the laptop mostly for email and web browsing but occasionally must use development tools (mostly VS2008) to review/correct work by my staff. I love the concept behind the Dell Z600 but I'm worried I won't be satisfied with the performance of that machine. I hate waiting - for anything!

I would love it if the Z turned out to be a good choice, but I was just playing around on Dell's site and it doesn't look like the 64-bit version of Win7 is an option. We are doing mostly 64-bit dev now so I believe it would be best for me to have 64-bit on my machine. Does anyone know if it is possible to use 64-bit Win7 on this machine?

 

As long as you're realistic about the Z600, I don't think you will be disappointed with performance. 1.6Ghz is not that slow. With 4GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, the Z600 purrs along just fine. Battery life is phenomenal, along with running very cool and quiet. There are many advantages to that slower, lower-voltage 1.6Ghz chip! I've really been quite happy with it. As a matter of fact, I'm going to be selling my Dell Studio 1640 (in my sig) a MUCH higher spec'd computer and just use the Z600 because all of it's other attributes mean more to me than just clock speed.

Regarding 64-bit...there is nothing that would keep the Z600 from running 64-bit Windows 7. You would lose some of the supporting software as Dell doesn't supply 64-bit drivers, etc., for some items like the fingerprint reader, the touchpanel bezel, etc. All the main hardware would work just fine, and you'd end up with a cleaner installation of Windows 7, which would be faster than the current installation Dell provides, which with Control Point, etc., I think tends to bog it down. The Control Point security suite is nice, but so far hasn't proven itself yet, and it seems too buggy (still).

Let me know if you have more questions. I see you're in S. CA...me too. Whereabouts?

 

Thanks lancorp. I'm in the Newport Beach area. I don't think I would miss the fingerprint reader or touchpanel bezel, but I was hoping to be able to use the webcam/face recog and wireless docking/charging. I'm planning to call Dell this week and discuss this all with them. Don't know if I'll get anywhere with that, but I'll let you know.

 

I searched Geekbench for scores for this computer and there aren't any, which is odd. Would someone mind posting your Geekbench score? Im trying to determine if I should get one of the leftovers on fleabay or the v13.

thanks

 

Here are my Geekbench results. Never heard of Geekbench, but it looks to only test CPU and memory, which isn't very conclusive about overall performance of a system, especially taking into account the fact that a 256GB SSD is a big performance enhancer, yet Geekbench doesn't test disk (from what I could tell...)

 

Thanks lancorp! you're right Geekbench isn't the best but its good for testing out the processor which is what I was interested in. Sometimes Geekbench will give you results for machines that aren't out yet (it was used to test the intel i processors in Macs before they hit the public, which of course were leaked to various sites that started the rumor mill) Thanks for taking the time to do it.