Thinking about buying a Dell 8600...

I'm looking at Dell 8600s with the UXGA screen. I work in cars alot so having something bright that doesn't get washed out as easily is appealing. I also will bring it back and forth to work. Anyone have a problem with it overheating while sitting on your lap? Any problems with the touchpad and pointer buttons?

I'm just looking for some input from those who have it. I don't want to spend a bunch of money and end up with a piece.

Thanks

 

Hi justin00stang,

I have an 8600 with UXGA screen, and am really happy with it (a few grumbles, but I can live with them). I've used it in the car with no problems, though of course it's not going to be as bright in daylight as in a room. But the screen is beautiful and much better and brighter than on my old Toshiba (that was impossible to use in the car!). I'm having problems with the screen turning off suddenly if I lower the brightness too much, or remove the power adaptor, but I think this is because Aloha Bob PC relocator messed up my regedit settings for the power management (this problem started up since I relocated my PC). So nothing to worry about I THINK..... (just have to reinstall everything).

The laptop of course gets hot on your lap, but I've used it that way for four hours with nothing underneath and its just fine. The 8600 has a PM 1.7 chip which has much lower heat dissipation than a normal Pentium chip, or even a mobile one. The heat dissipation on the 9100 must be crazy, but apparently the fan doesn't go on as often with it because there is more space in the casing. The fan on the 8600 very rarely goes on, only if you're doing fancy graphics stuff (3D). The thing that gets hottest the most is the 1GB of RAM for some reason in the middle lower section. Also the 7200rpm HD gets pretty warm.

It is relatively light, only 3kg, which for a laptop of this spec is really very good. I take it everywhere with me and it's great. The other good thing is that the battery lasts for about 4.5 hrs (I've even used it up to 5), so when I go out with it I almost never need to take the power brick -- this makes it even lighter than other laptops!

The touchpad is OK, but the buttons for it are a bit hard, though I've become thoroughly used to them now (the touchpad on the Sony Vaio is so much smoother though). They COULD have put a dedicated scroll bar for crying out loud, but you can configure the touch pad to double as a scroll bar/back-forward button as well, so it isn't that inconvenient. The touchstick itself is fine, very responsive and solid, and doesn't start drifting by itself periodically like on my Toshiba. The major problem with it though is the buttons for it, absolutely useless. They should have put the stick lower so that it uses the same buttons as the touchpad, then it would have been OK. I only ever use the touchpad now, even though I used to be a stick user.

The build quality is like it was on my Toshiba Satellite Pro, nothing special, and because it's plastic, it creaks when you move it about, like most laptops. I'm a bit worried about the plastic under the DVD drive, it's very thin, and if I'm not careful might crack someday. But if you want something much more solid, go for a Lattitude (graphics card on it isn't as good though), which has a metal chassis and plastic lower case (as opposed to all being plastic) so it doesn't creak, or go for an M60 which is all metal (but it's REALLY expensive).

All in all, I'm very happy with the 8600. My only advice would be to get it really decked out, and put in bluetooth as well as the A/b/g card (not just b/g), the difference in price is negligible (that's the only mistake I made).

:: PM 1.7 GHz, UXGA, 1GB RAM, 4x DVD-RW, Dell 1350 b/g wireless, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, 60 GB 7200rpm Hitatchi HD. ::

 

I'm now considering a Latitude D800, which is very similar to the 8600. I checked out a UXGA on an 8600 yesterday at the mall, I liked it. How does yours look in the office under a bunch of fluorescent lights? this part of the mall was kind of dark.

 

Hi justin00stang,

The WUXGA screen looks beautiful almost everywhere; it is one of the best screens I've seen anywhere yet, even better than on the Apple Powerbooks. You can't go wrong with this screen!!

The ONLY problem with the D800 is that the graphics card is really crappy, and this affects the 3D performance, even the 2D image quality somewhat. The plus side with the D800 is the construction is very good; metal chassis, lower plastic case, metal backing for LCD lid. To me the performance was more important, so I opted for the 8600, but it really does creak alot because of the all-plastic construction.

If you want the whole works, check out the Precisison M60 -- all metal construction, nVidia FX 1000 128MB graphics card (not as good as the ATI 9600 Pro Turbo, but you have to be an expert to spot the difference - except for DX9 games, then the ATI is noticably better). Also on the M60, the LAN is 10 times faster than on the 8600/9100/D800. This laptop is a really expensive option however....... But if you have the money, I would definitely recommend it over everything else.