Latitude D420 with Core Duo U2500 available

At least on Dells German page this option is available. If somebody could finally do a review! I would love to know the performance of this little rocker...

BTW: price difference is less then 80 euros between u1400 and u2500. unfortunately no word on battery time with the core duo option...

 

The D420 Core Duo option is probably available for most if not all the Dell's EU divisions. It's available in the UK and France.

I've been eagerly waiting to see a comparison between the two processor choices: the Core Solo and Core Duo. I'm wondering if the Core Duo will have a fan. The Core Solo is fanless as I understand it. Also, I'm of course wondering about the differences in speed and battery life.

Edit: why does Europe get this option before the US?

 

There shouldn't be much of a difference in battery life between the U1400 and U2500. The U2500 brings a much-needed boost in power to ultraportables - well worth the money to upgrade.

Thanks for sharing this.

 

huh, I dont see it in the US site

 

Good news, of course my order just went in for the solo..

Must give them a call and change it.

 

I've had the D420 for a couple of days. For the most part the machine works fairly well. Everything that I normally use a notebook for works fine. I can do spreadsheets, word processing, surfing, etc. with no issues. The CPU is not the limiting factor for me. The issue I have with the machine is the slow as molasses hard drive. It's not too annoying now but it has its moments. I wouldn't mind the CPU upgrade, but unfortunately it isn't going to help the performance of the machine for what tasks I perform.

BTW, the Core Solo does have a fan but it rarely runs.

 

Lenovo has a back to school sale with a $700 discount for the ThinkPad X60s ($1,799 instead of $2,499). I had been waiting for the dual core D420 but when I saw the Lenovo offer I ordered the X60s instead. It doesn't have a widescreen display but it comes with a faster 2.5" hard drive. In contrast to the D420, the X60s uses a fan, which might bother some people. Lenovo also offers an X60 for $1,399 instead of $1,899. (I hope it's okay to mention Lenovo in a Dell forum.)

 

There's no problem with that.

A 2.5" hard drive is a lot faster than a 1.8", good point. The X60's CPU is also more powerful.

 

Well I really would like to see some benchmarks with the core duo ulv. Anyway the X60s was tempting me too, if it only had a wiescreen display. I really like those better not for the aspect ratio but for the resolution...

 

when will this be available from the us site? i was about to purchase the core solo today until i checked here and found this thread...

 

Well could you say anything about the screen (brightness, clarity and so on?), and are you really sure that you heard a fan and not the hard drive?

 

The screen is fairly nice. It is a matte screen but is fairly clear and bright. There is a little of the glitter effect but most matte screens exhibit this trait. My screen is a Samsung. The machine does have a fan and it does run time to time. I am using RMClock to undervolt the CPU so the fan rarely turns on now. I wouldn't worry about the fan noise though since it's very quiet even when running. The hard drive is nearly silent...it is a Toshiba BTW.

As I stated earlier I think the bottle neck on the machine is the hard drive and not really the CPU. I guess if you plan on crunching some serious data or running several different programs at once you'll see some lagging due to the CPU. Most people that purchase this machine plan on using it for basic word processing, spreadsheets, email, surfing, etc. In that case the machine works spendidly. Yes, there is a slight lag when launching apps and if the hard drive is chugging away you're going to have to wait for it to settle down before you can throw more at it.

FYI, the 4-cell and the 6-cell batteries are the same size. Obviously, the 6-cell is a bit heavier. Battery life on the 4-cell is around 3-3.5 hours...the 6-cell is around 5 hours. This is the with screen dimmed and the WiFi enabled (BT off).

 

Both my D420 and X60 have arrived today. I haven't had a chance to try them thoroughly yet but first impression of the D420 was ultra-light, beautiful non-reflective 12" 1280x800 screen, and finally comes with a multi-card reader and a 1394 port (it's about time for both). The 1.06 Core Solo was a little too slow and most of the time it stays at 797Mhz. Geezus! However, once the operating system is loaded, it appears quite smooth.

On the other hand, the X60 looks, well, just like an IBM with its plastic-like casing - nothing to write home about. But the T2300 Duo Core is a whole different ball game in which loading Windows is quite a breeze as compared to the D420. But then, I just realized Lenovo screwed up in which the system only comes with 256MB RAM; a farcry from the 1GB we asked for. Otherwise, loading up XP could be even faster. The X60 is also very light, feels like a 3lb'er much like the D420...

PS. At first I thought the D420 came with a webcam but it turned out to be the ambience light sensor, situated just below the LCD near the left hinge.

hehe...I'll be DHL-ing my current D410 to India and I will be have to decide whether to get the D420 or the X60. Any suggestions anyone?

 

How do the D420 and X60 compare in terms of size, noise, and heat?

 

Both are very comparable in fact.

Size = D420 = 3.0lbs. X60 = 3.5lbs
Noise = totally quiet for both
dimensions = D420 is wider because of the widescreen. Therefore, many of us prefer the wider keyboard with slight bigger keys. As for the X60, think of it having the same dimension as the D410, execpt slightly thiner.
Heat = Surprisingly the X60 is much cooler even when running benchmarking tools. This is probably because the T2300 is using lower voltage than the D420's U1300. The D420's underside is slightly warm but still can be called a "laptop"
Battery = We were shocked to see the battery benchmark results. Using Battery Eater, the D420's 4-cell battery can only last for 2 hrs 6 mins. Totally absurd! We haven't done the X60 battery test yet...

We also did some basic business applicaiton benchmarking on the D420 and come to realized that the D410's 1.6 GHz Sonoma is about 25-35% faster than the D420's 1.06 GHz Core Solo. Just what we suspected but we didn't expect it to be this much...

I forgot to bring my digital camera today, so no pictures yet...

 

I'm note sure the lower voltage comment makes sense. The T2300 is supposed to use 1.325V in normal operation (not throttled). However, the U1300 is ULV or Ultra Low Voltage. Shouldn't the U1300 have a lower operating voltage than the T2300 because it's ULV?

 

You are very right about this and I don't have a clue what I was saying.

 

iTwins, what you write about the D420 is very disappointing. I had expected better performance. Even the battery life is much worse than I thought. Let's hope we get full reviews of the D420 soon.

 

Yes, wait for [other's] full reviews. But if you're curious, these are the [preliminary] test results my guys tested.

Column 1: Dell D420 (1.06 GHz Duo Solo, 512MB, 1.8" 4200rpm HDD, XP SP2)
Column 2: Lenovo X60 (1.66 Duo Core, 512MB, 2.5" 5400rpm HDD, XP SP2)
Column 3: Dell D410 (1.73 GHz Sonoma, 512MB, 2.5" 5400rpm HDD, XP SP2)



The tests are incomplete and preliminary. And these tests do not represent what we really wanted, as these machines are primarily used for office applications, not 3D graphics, number crunching, etc. Eventually, we will have to run it against SYSMark04, BatteryMark, and other business-oriented benchmarking tools...once we find time.

 

The Core Duo U2500 is now available as an option for the D420 in the US. The Better and Best configurations use the Core Duo U2500 for the processor.

Also, 80gb 1.8" 4200rpm hard drives are available as a hard drive option. Although this option will delay shipment of the notebook.

 

I recall that someone said that these were the new generation of perpendicular drive. Is there any confirmation of that? Is this a worthwhile option (i.e., might it improve the generally poor performance of the 1.8" drives)?