Latitude E4300 first impressions

I sent Notebook Review Forums, a 2000 word review.

In a nutshell of the laptop's primary deficits, because of the addition of the Page Down and Page Up respectively on top of the keyboard, there is some considerably flex near the arrow keys, which are also significantly smaller.

The quality of the keyboard experience has also deteriorated with the responsiveness of the keys lower than the D-series. The keys are a lot nosier than the D-series keyboard. I'm not sure why they went with the change. Perhaps the keys were made lighter in order to accomodate the backlight feature.

Speaker quality is also very poor even compared to the D-series, but you obviously wouldn't listen to music on a business laptop with earbuds anyways.

When I try to play videos/clips, there is sometimes a yellowish tinge. I'm not sure that necessitates the replacement of the whole LED screen or if that is something that can be replaced easily. Whether or not that is possible, will probably determine whether I return the laptop or not.

Everything else is superb. Build quality, heat management, touchpoint/trackpoint, battery life. It's unfortunate that the two main user interface devices are rather poorly designed/built.

 

Sigh, that's too bad. So Phoenix, are ya keeping it? Feels like a let down..

 

Phoenix, does your machine has a backlight keyboard? If you don't maybe that is why it flexes.

It is interesting how the 13.3inch has those issues, when the 14inch seams promising, based on this review:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/noteb...ll-Latitude-E6400-14-1in-Business-Notebook/p1
14inch nearly perfect, 13inch has issues... and i thought the 12 and 13inch was the flag ship model of the new latitude series...

 

I'm returning mine. Not going to go to the bother. I'm also going to send a revised review to Notebook Review. I don't recommend this notebook at all.

If you want performance, go with the Sony Z.
If you don't care for performance, and are concerned about build, for the same price range go with the X301.

To be honest, Dell's Business customer service has been superb. But no amount of customer service can make up for flawed engineering.

Screen = Poor
Sound = Poor
Keyboard = Poor

When every user interface, your visual, your auditory and your sense of touch with a laptop is poor, it really doesn't matter how much customer service you get to replace flawed parts, with new flawed parts.

The fact of the matter is that the internal performance of these laptops are all derived from the same manufacturers - Intel for processors, Samsung or Hitachi for hard drives, Crusair for RAM. What differentiates laptops is their build quality. Here, Dell clearly fails with its E-series. This laptop is worth about $1000 less than I paid.
My conclusion was that the performance gains offered weren't significant enough to be worth while to justify the $2250 that I paid. I'm going to stick with the Latitude D820, whose keyboard I most definitely prefer. I'm going to go with the Lenovo X200t. If I didn't care for the tablet function, I'd definitely go with the X301.

 

I totally agree with you on the service vs. flawed engineering. What's the point in owning a Ferrari if it's always in the garage or workshop?

It's too bad really. We are getting the same kind of feedback on the E4200 thread. I hope Dell is listening. They appears to have really screwed up the launch of their flagship products. Oh corporations, such as my own, will still buy as bound by their obsolescence replacement lifecycles but not if their sys-admin, who DO read these forums, have anything to say about it.

Phoenix, you should also consider the x200s. By all accounts, it is a machine that shows a lot of promise and like you said, it shares much of the same internal hardware with Dell.

 

can you remind me the specs on your E4300? I'm still waiting for mine but I went for faster processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB Ultra performance SSD...

 

The only difference between mine and yours would be backlight and my 80 GB SSD RAM. The performance isn't what the issue is. It's fast obviously. It's the construction of the machine and choice of user interface items.

 

I personally wouldn't recommend the vaio... I've had so many that I've lost count.. back from the original 505/SR series. Their customer service is the WORST in the industry so you better hope you don't have any problems down the line.

My other gripe with sony is the amount of bloatware they install. I bought a TZ290 last summer and wasted 4h of my life trying to clean it up, then having to do clean vista install and download bunch of drivers to reinstall. For a $2.5K business laptop this is clearly unacceptable...The Z has amazing screen and it's very thin and sturdy. Sony will always have amazing displays even better than Macbook Air or MBP LEDs..

Personally if the E4300 is so bad, I'd probably cancel my order and order an X200 with a 9cell battery.. The X201 or X300 with ULV will be way too slow (I still have my MBA which blows both the X201 and X301 on the benchmarks and it's ridiculously slow)...

 

on a similar note, another potential laptop that might interest you but it's grossly overpriced imho is the Voodoo Envy 133.. very sleek but my problem is the ULV processor :/

 

It's not so bad - it's not just not worth what you pay. You can get a similar laptop for $1000 less. For the price you're paying, compared to its competitors, it really really sucks. $1000 premium for their customer service basically in a sense.

That $1000 premium should be for premium materials, build quality, interface - this is where Dell fails. I can put together the same performance on a machine for $1000 less (even from within Dell if you like their service).

I'm looking seriously into the X200s. The Envy 133 has terrible battery life.