Latitude D620: Plenty coming off 2 yr.leases on Ebay

Correction : Plenty coming off 3 year leases on Ebay, appx $300.


As far as I can figure and nobody has really written anything on this that I can find on the interent...But buying off a reputable dealer on Ebay for 'off-lease' used computers can be very fruitful. First off, if the machine has been on a 3 year lease, then its more than likely that any quirks, failings or problems have been dealt with on the warranty and once they enter the 'used market', that as a group they are a pretty good bunch of machines, more than likely used by mid-high level business employees and treated well....assuming your buying from a top tier used seller thats selling just fresh 'off-lease' machines. Thats been my exp.

I have been looking for used notebooks on Ebay. Zero'ed in on the Latitude D620 as a good value for the money...around $300 plus or minus. 2 ghz 'core 2 duo', 14" screen, 2 gig memory. This machine was a top of the line machine retailing for between $1500-2000 , 3 years ago. Now spending $300 to stay somewhat current doesnt seem like such a bad deal. My older notebook that needed replacement was 4 years old and sold in the $700 range, 1.73 ghz centrino 'mobile' single processor--,then not quite a top of the line offering but more advanced and slightly better than an older P4 3.0+ghz or so , but is now dated and quiclkly growing long in the tooth. Seems that this way of staying current is more co$t effective.


Anyhow, alot of the old grittier reviews tell of problems with heat issues for the D620 and to the best of my knowledge of figuring this out.. that was all related to an older bios version that didnt run the fan appropriately and/or dust buildup. Have bought 2 of these in the last 6 weeks, stress tested them and they run solid and cool. The machines I bought between the two of them, one was in 'new' condition--I couldnt tell otherwise, and one was in very good or near new condition.

Got my moneys worth and replaced an older notebook 1.73ghz single processor that was getting long in the tooth due to an 'internet security'-Kaspersky; program that has progressively each day, through updates, has grown into bloatware. It analyzes all my internet traffic and keeps people from stealing my credit card # and identity. Running all my standard stuff I was running ,all too frequently, at between 80-100% of cpu usage, so it was time to get a fresh horse.

Now with a dual processor D620, everything is copasetic, I can run internet radio, have 20 tabs open in firefox, and Kaspersky is running and still have something like a min. of 50% or more of cpu capability left over for some workhorse programs. It has the 2ghz T7200 Core 2 duo processor which is listed by at least one website as a high mid level processor by todays standards and currently in the middle of the pack of this range.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/mid_range_cpus.html

 

I think the D620 is more than 2 years old. More likely 3 to 4 years. The E6400 was released in August 2008 and that was preceded by the D630.

Nonetheless, a good refurbished model can provide a good budget machine.

John

 

Sorry, my post probably absent mindedly said 2 years old, its 3 years old.
Will go back and correct.

 

wish i had my ebay accnt before my mom bought her toshiba w/ a celeron for $350..

 

The D620 is still a very viable model with some upgrades. I have one I put 4GB of ram and a 7200RPM 160GB in and it works quite well. Dual 2.0ghz.

FLASH THE BIOS however to version A10. Earlier D620 bios revisions have some major issues. And even DELL marks the bios for the D620 as a Critcial update.

The D620 is 3 to 4 years old depending on when you got it. The newest D620s might still have a few months left on a 3 year waranty. The oldest are pushing four years old.

 

the D620 is a good workhorse.
We have thousands of them at work and I had a few personal ones at home.

Infact my wife still uses a 3 year old D620 that we bought new. I upgraded it to 4gb ram and put in a SSD, its as fast as any modern notebook for what she does. (reading news, watching videos, writing papers etc).

There is a known problem with the Nvidia graphics chip on these. As they age, due to the heat cycles, they may become disconnected from the motherboard and start to cause all kinds of strange issues.
We had the motherboard replaced in my wife's laptop three times due to this nvidia issue. each time after about 1 year of use, the screen will either go blank or show strange lines or colors through it. First time it happened we thought it was the LCD and had that replaced, but it didn't help. replacing the MB fixed the issue but it came back after a year of use, and it was replaced again and recently after another year, it was replaced for a 3rd time. (we got a 4 year warranty on it). I will probably have it replaced again in a year before the warranty expires. Based on past experience, we'll probably get 1 year of use out of that so a total of 5 years of use out of it. not bad.

My own D620 with the intel integrated video doesn't have any problems. Sold it after 3 years and got a E6400 (I do sys admin work and run many test virtual machines on my box so needed faster machine that supported more memory). Also got rid of the E6400 recently, now running a E4300 with 8gb ram and 256ssd. works fine even with 6 VM's running.

the D620 is a good machine, just look out if it has Nvidia video rather than Intel video.

Upgrade the ram and put in a SSD and it will be plenty fast for most use.

 

I think you should play a little bit more and get a D630 for around $350.

You get the Santa Rosa chipset which will support 800MHZ bus processors like a T7800/T9500 or X9000, SATA 2 for some of the faster SSD's, and a much brighter screen. You can of course use a D630 screen on a D620, but for the cost you might as well just get a D630. Check craigslist as well because I've seen them for as low as $250 locally.

The D620 does have a better keyboard in my opinion though. It seems dell tried to remove as much weight from the D630 as they could. The revised keyboard feels lighter in weight, but the key feedback is sort of mushy compared to the D620.