whats up with the new ugly latitudes?

i was in the market for new laptop and was considering dell latitudes for their reliability/business quality. i was shocked. the new latitude design looks so ugly and unprofessional? whats going on? these laptops look like toys/consumer products instead of business laptops.

what will the next model refresh look like?

 

I said that to myself last summer when the E6_20 series came out, ugh. That is why I jumped ship to Lenovo. Had they kept the E6400/E6410 styled look I would have been okay. Apparently they are selling like hotcakes, my mom changed jobs recently, traded in her E6400 for a E6420 and she hates it.

I highly doubt Dell will change chassis that short of a run. D600/D610, D620/D630, E6400/E6410 all had the same chassis. Dell tends to keep the same chassis design for 4+ years to keep the same accessories over generations, at least 2 generations at least.

 

I LOVE the color of their brushed aluminum. It is GORGEOUS. But the actual design, edges, and the line is ridiculously grotesque.

People use it because companies issue them. And generally companies dont care about design. They just care about price and warranty. If they cared about performance enough like Autodesk does, they will settle with precisions anyways.

 

Yeah, the new designs are awful. Couldnt believe what they did!

 

I really don't care. The rubber palmrests are MUCH nicer to use than the plast of the 10 generation, the keyboard is MUCH softer (great for typing all day) and the keyboard is backlit (with a numpad to boot).

The orange is stupid, yes, but who cares? The bezel around the screen is large, and they should have upped screen sizes an extra inch or something to compensate, but otherwise it's great. The outside I don't really care about.

That said, the E6420 is a terrible, terrible machine compared to the E6520. I am so glad Dreamliner told me this when I was buying from him. At work, some people have the E6420, and aside from the horrible screen, the keyboard flexes and sucks. My E6520 is much better than my E6510 though, much better for typing, and I've got a numpad.

 

Yeah, that's one of the laptop series I'd never even consider.

 

I actually don't mind the look of the new latitudes. I've had a chance to play around with them and they a) look fairly decent in real life and b) feel very solid.

What turns me off is the size/weight. They all seem to be one size to big, meaning the 14" feels like a 15", the 15" like a 16", etc. I can understand that from the Precision line, but the Latitudes?

Another thing that is weird is the specs of the Vostro vs the Latitudes. All new Vostros come standard with USB 3.0 and some of the them (e.g. the 3450) have better discrete GPUs than the Latitudes. What's up with that?

 

Ya but overall Vostro are considered entry level, FOR me it is just like HP's Probook and Lenovo's ThinkPad Edge/L/SL series. They do experiments on them, like putting AMD CPU's (which you never find in mainstream Elitebook, Latitude or ThinkPad), or other tid-bits. Vostro also only comes with standard 1 year warranty, do not offer anything higher than 1368x768 for 13-15" and 1600x900 for 17.3". Again Latitude is Dell's bread and butter, their mainstream workhorse laptop.

After playing around with my mom's E6420, I can tell you I do not like it. Ignoring aesthetics, it is similar to the E6400/E6410 but it feels fatter and bulkier. Light than the E6400/E6410 yes, but the top of those were solid metal. For me, weight is somewhat important, but if it compromises the durability of the notebook, then no. I believe the E6420/E6520 had build quality issues at first launch. My mom absolutely hates her E6420, but it is a work laptop so she just uses it as is, but she prefers her old E6400 to the E6420 she has now.