Inspiron vs Latitude

What is the main difference in Inspiron line vs the Latitude line of notebooks?

using for home business office. Very light travel, mostly to Starbucks

Thanks.

 

the biggest differnce is the quality of how they are built.
The Latitude is built much more durable than the inspiron.
Another differnece is that the Latitude is a business class notebook, that usually means better Customer Service.

If both the lattitude are similarly configured and there isn't much of a price difference, I'd recommend the lattitude.

 

Latitudes don't usually have Expresscard (still use PCMCIA), plus some of them only have one mono speaker.

 

well, it depends on what you are using the laptop for.

If it's just for business use, then one speaker won't make much differnce.
If you need an expresscard then I suppose the inspiron would be the weapon of choice.

the latitudes are designed for business use, ie lots of traveling and mostly business/office apps.

if you would be so kind as to give us a more detailed list of your computer needs, we would be able to give you a more accurate answer.

 

Agreed, but doubt that will be the case. Similarly configured machines are likely to several hundred $ difference in price. You are getting a better housing for your parts - metal vs. plastic, less flex in the LCD, etc, but if the only move is from home to Starbucks and back then I would go with the Inspiron and use the difference to pay for several month's worth of low fat soy chai lattes

 

LOL - I configured both the Latitude & Inspiron with the same config, actually the Inspiron has some more juice - and the price was almost $400 less...

Here is the config --

222-4666 1 Inspiron 6400, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7200 (4MB/2.00GHz/667MHz)
320-4650 1 15.4 Inch Wide-screen WXGA Display for Inspiron 6400/E150
311-5783 1 2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm for Inspiron 6400/E1505
320-4655 1 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory, for Inspiron 6400/E1505
341-3111 1 80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive for Inspiron 6400/E1505
420-6560 1 Microsoft Windows Vista Business Edition, English
420-5769 1 Internet Search and Portal
463-2282 1 Dell Owners Manual installed on your system,click on icon after system set-up to access
420-6436 1 Vista, PC-Restore, Dim/Insp
420-6481 1 Dell Support, Vista, Dim/Insp
313-4910 1 Dell Resource DVD with Application Backup
420-5924 1 Icon Consolidation Application
430-0493 1 Integrated 10/100 Network Cardand Modem, for Inspiron
412-0917 1 Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0, for Inspiron
313-3959 1 8X DVD+/-RW Drive for Inspiron 6400/E1505
420-6464 1 Roxio Creator Basic
313-4217 1 Integrated High Definition Audio, Inspiron
430-1918 1 Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/g Mini Card (54Mbps) for Inspiron 6400/E1505
420-6594 1 Network Associates McAfee 8.0 English, 30-Day Trial
312-0403 1 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, for Inspiron 6400/E1505
412-0933 1 AOL for Broadband
412-0934 1 Earthlink
412-0931 1 Corel Snapfire Plus Starter Edition and Paint Shop Pro XI trial
412-0915 1 MS WORKS 8.5
985-3538 1 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
980-2800 1 Type 3 Contract - NextBusiness Day Parts and LaborOn-Site Response, Initial Year
950-9797 1 No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
412-0359 1 Soft Contracts - Qualxserve
960-2780 1 Warranty Support,Initial Year
465-8714 1 Media Direct 3.0
466-4890 1 Thank you for choosing Dell
310-8314 1 Intel Centrino Core Duo Processor

 

Oh Yeah - this config was $1256

 

For "very light travel" I'd say inspiron. spend the $400 on something else (coffee?)...

Latitudes are *great* for someone who travels (=plane, train, whatever), and has to *work* in those conditions.

However, for just moving to Starbucks and back, no need.

 

Nice spec, just a couple of things you might want to consider.

I would go for the 533 MHz RAM - cheaper and virtually identical performance due to higher latency on 667MHz. You may also want to spec it with just 1Gig of RAM on 1 DIMM and buy the 2nd Gig from Newegg - much cheaper.

I would also go for a larger 5400 RPM hard drive, but that's personal preference. If you need the higher speed and are prepared to sacrifice storage space for it then go ahead, personally I don't think that the slight speed increase (it isn't the 33% faster that you wouldepxect based on spindle speeds) is worth the price premium.

Also, not sure what you are using it for, but the cost of the upgrade from Works to Office is much cheaper getting OEM through Dell than upgrading later.

 

Agreed on the RAM suggestion.

7200 rpm does make a small difference mainly in load times, i.e. loading levels in games, or large video files. Other than that, the bigger 5400rpms are good too, as the seek time is nearly the same (and that determines how quick you can access small files). The big performance jump is from 4200 -> 5400.

And rather than paying $$$ for Office, why not get OpenOffice? I've used it for my professional needs for years.

 

Thanks Roff and Mini,

I have Office already...

I already ordered it as the config is above...

What does "High Latency" mean ? I'm not a tech guy

Thanks.

 

Latency is essentially the time between operations for your RAM. Obviously a higher time is worse, but I doubt you'll notice anything. It'll really be between 533MHz 4-4-4-x and 667 5-5-5-x anyways. No big deal. You got the higher speed but also higher latency RAM.

I think the money spent on a smaller but faster hard drive's definitely worth it. You can always expand with an external hard drive, but you can't really do anything to make the internal one faster, short of upgrading. Seek times are still a bit better with the 7200RPM drives and average throughput's ~20% higher as well (for sequential read/write).

 

Well, one thing to note between the price differences of the Inpsiron vs. the Latitude is that all Latitudes come with a standard 3yr next business day onsite warranty. The Inspirons only come standard with 1yr, and that is what you got with your order. If you tacked a 3yr warranty onto the Inspiron, it would have come a lot closer in price.