e6420/e6520 to release tomorrow?

Hahaha totally true. Plus it's only like 60 bucks to upgrade up to HD+ (1600x900).

 

Oddly it's $49 to upgrade to the HD+ on the 5420, but $79 on the 6420. The cpu upgrades are also differently priced: $100 for the 2520M on the 6420 vs $60 on the 5420. The upgrade to an i5-2410 is $25 on the 6420, but $30 on the 5420.

Anyhoo, just ordered a 5420. i5-2410/HD+/backlit board/centrino 6205/2gb ram/bluetooth/stock hdd. $737. I'll toss in more ram after it arrives, since $80 for an extra 2gb seemed like molestation.

 

On the 15.6" Latitude and Precision models, the optional higher-resolution displays upgrade more than just the resolution. Maximum brightness, contrast ratio, viewing angles also improve with the each step up-

15.6" - HD (1366x768) LED Display
Max. Brightness- 220 nits
Viewing angle- std
Contrast Ratio- 400:1

15.6" - HD+ (1600x900) Premium LED Display
Max. Brightness- 250 nits
Viewing angle- WIDE
Contrast Ratio- 500:1

15.6" - FHD (1920x1080) Premium Ultrasharp Display
Max. Brightness- 300 nits
Viewing angle- WIDE
Contrast Ratio- 600:1

 

Spend an extra $20 for the Intel card. All of the "Dell" branded cards are probably Broadcom. Never again.

There's always a promotion. The only question is whether there's a coupon code, which vary between 28 and 35%.....sooner or later, there's always a coupon code, but it's based on the original fantasy land price. Then there's some room for negotiation.....

 

Apparently something to do with "promotions" (chat log edited to remove Agent's name because I see no reason to post his name )

 

Well you should be getting 1600x900. 1368x768 is unacceptable resolution for 14" and higher.

lol never believe those sales reps, I'd get better advice from a pebble.

 

Thanks for the comments & advice.... Well I went for the stock 1366x768 screen... like I said, because I am concerned about everything becoming too small for my eyes (text, icons, tabs, webaddresses, etc.) at a higher resolution. Last summer I tried out a new MacBook Pro 15" w/1680x1050 hi-res screen (mostly opted for this spec because it was the only way to get a non-glossy screen). My eyes strained so hard looking at that screen, it hurt. Granted Apple's horrible blurry text rendering contrbuted to the pain, but in general on the hi-res screen everything was SO tiny. I'm mid-30's with 20/30 vision, but still couldn't deal and returned the MacBook.

The unfortunate thing about buying a just-released business laptop is that there's no where easy to go look at the thing before buying it. Maybe Dell's 1600x900 won't cast things nearly as small as Apple's 1680x1050? I can't tell from here, all I know is that for a longtime I've lived on a 1280x800 15.4" laptop and 1280x1024 18" Dell LCD monitor and am comfortable on both. I spend most of my time in Outlook, Word, Excel, and I.E. -- that's about it, barring occassional basic photo mgmt.

Maybe I do need to go scour a school bookstore to see what a Vosotro screen looks like... I asked a chat agent and I can cancel up until 4/8 so there's time to make the change to the 1600x900. I need to just get in front of one and spend some time with it to try & make an assessment... maybe the local Microcenter has one.

As to battery -- I stuck with the basic 6-cell. Not a road warrior, thought I'd skip the added weight for now. I believe it has Express Charge. When the 6 dies I'll probably go for the 9-cell at that point, cheap through ebay.

 

When you have the option to go 1600x900 on 15.6", you should never stay with 1366x768. The 15.4" MacBook Pro at 1680x1050 is about 130 dots per inch, whereas the 1600x900 at 15.6" will be closer to 117 dots per inch which is about on-par with a 13.3" 1366x768 display. You'll do just fine with the 1600x900.
You're talking about a resolution 80 pixels narrower on a screen with a wider aspect ratio. Stuff definitely won't look as small as on 15.4" 1680x1050.

Plus, I've used both Mac OS X and Windows 7 running on a 15.4" 1920x1200 display. For some reason it's actually a bit more eye-straining to use Mac OS X at a high resolution than it is to use Windows, and I don't know why that is. It might be due to the colors of the UI elements, or like you said the blurry text rendering.

I highly recommend you cancel and get the 1600x900. Not only is it a better resolution for a 15.6" display, but the display is also brighter and has a decent viewing angle. If anything, brightness is more of a factor for bad vision than text size.
The 15" 2048x1536 display on my Thinkpad T42p strains my eyes when I use it in a brightly-lit room or outside because it's so dim, but it's just fine to use in a classroom or even moreso in the dark.

EDIT: one more thing, Windows has a neat feature that lets you increase the size of text within Windows UI elements, and it actually works quite nicely.

 

My friend is seriously planning to purchase the Dell Latitude E6420 after selling off his XT2 tablet recently. Though he's unsure whether the NVIDIA GPU on the E6420 has Optimus Technology (switching to Intel GPU), I’m pretty sure it does but can anyone confirm this before he can gleefully order his new Dell?

 

Dell Latitude E6420 Details | Dell

It supports Optimus.