Informations about Latitude D610

I am looking for a 14" XGA PM730, 512 MB RAM, 60GB HDD, 64 MB RAM video, DVD Dual Layer, light but solid, for professional use (Office, C, Matlab, some graphics, Wi-Fi).
Dell Latitude D610 seems a great notebook.
But I have read on different reviews about 2 problems:
1) a very noisy head-phones output: normal line out is very bad, too?
2) a strange electrical noise when a USB device is connected to the PC.

Someone has got the PC can confirm these two problems?
Or have they been solved in recent products?

I'd like to know more about the solidity of the case and the monitor, too.

Thanks

 

I don't have D610, so this is based on what i've read/seen from other users. The headphone problem is still there (the ATI chip is causing the interference), but Dell is supposed to address this issue in their next Bios update (sometime in June).

I haven't read anything about the USB problem.

Hope this helps,

~SG~
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Inspiron 9300 || 1.73GHz || 60GB 7200rpm ||1gb DDR2||ATI Radeon X300 64MB || CD/DVD RW || XP Pro

 

I've had the d610 for a couple months now, and yes there is a definate problem with the headphone jack. I took the advice given through this site, and purchased the turtlebeach usb-headphone adapter which essentially allows you to plug in standard headphones through a usb port instead of the standard jack. this solves the problem (although its still a bit aggravating to know that I can't use the standard head phone jack). I'm glad to hear from southerngirl that dell is trying to address the problem, and hopefully they'll be able to fix it soon.

Regarding the electrical noise when usb is attached, I have had no such problem.

Regarding the monitor, I opted for the SXGA screen (and the X300 card) and I'm quite pleased with it. It's not the absolute best screen I've ever seen, but it is crisp and has decent viewing angles. Of course, it would have been nice to have the option of a shiny screen like sony and fujitsu, but in the long run, I don't think it's necessary.

The case on the D610 is great. The decklid is very sturdy feeling, and the chassis itself appears to be very durable, despite dell's repuration for building flimsy machines. I was suprised that it was a bit thicker than I had thought it would be. Nothing horrible, but it's not as thin as the HP dv1000 I use for work. I don't mind though, but it was something I noticed. Oh, and the keyboard is great.

I hope this helps. And to fyi, I was deciding between this machine and a comparably configured Thinkpad T42, and altough I know the T42 is a great machine, I have absolutely no regrets going with the Dell. Plus, altough the specs were similar, the Dell comes with the newer chipset, which was appealing to me.

One last thing, if you do decide to get the D610, I have a couple sticks of RAM sitting around that I took out of my machine when I upgraded to 2gb. If you're interested, I'm selling each 256mb stick for $25 shipped, which is less than if you upgrade from 256 to 513 when configuring your machine (at least last time I checked).

--greg---

 

You are very kind, both Southerngirl and Takashi.
I am Italian and this discussion is far more serious than those in my Country (on Italian web pages).
I am very glad to hear good impressions about D610 from you, Takashi, except the trouble with headphones.
I suppose you have got a 2 GHz CPU: what about the battery-life? I have just read a review of the 2 GHz D610 with SXGA resolution and your graphic card which reported 3 hours of autonomy with the benchmark simulates a normal use of the PC.
I hope the 1.6 GHz will reach 3 hours and a half.
The review remarked another little problem: beating the table on which the laptop is, for example with a punch, causes the image on the screen to vibrate. Do you confirm this?