dell d430... any ideas?

Hello,
What do u think about d430... I need a light weight 12.1 laptop? what do u think about it? Is 1.2 Ghz a big deal.. does it mean it is slow... and how does U7600 Compare to T7300 for example? Is this computer considered slow compared to d630?Latitude D430 Vista Premium - Intel Core2 Duo Processor ULV U7600 (1.20GHz, 533Mhz), Genuine Windows(r) XP Professional, SP2, with media
-- Latitude D430:
-- Intel Core2 Duo Processor ULV U7600 (1.20GHz, 533Mhz)
-- 12.1 inch Wide Screen WXGA LCD Panel
-- 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, (1GB Integrated) 2 DIMMs
-- Internal English Keyboard
-- Intel(r) Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950
-- 80GB Hard Drive, 8MM, 4200RPM
-- No Floppy Drive
-- Genuine Windows(r) XP Professional, SP2, with media
-- 90W A/C Adapter, Energy Star Compliant
-- D-Bay w/ 24X CDRW/DVD w/ Cyberlink PowerDVDTM
-- Intel(r) 3945 802.11a/g Dual-Band Mini Card
-- No Resource CD
-- 6 Cell Primary Battery
-- [312-0447]
-- 3 Year Limited Warranty plus 3 Year

 

I can offer some help on this. It depends what you want to use it for. I have tried the Dell D420, D630, XPS M1210, XPS M1330 and the Toshiba R500. I am a college student and am looking for a very portable system. I just ordered the Dell D430 but with XP Professional. What I have found is if you are looking to just do email, music, Word, Excel, PPT, movies and web surfing the Dell D430 would work fine and give you tons of portability and battery life. If you want to do gaming or alot of multimedia functions any ultra portable with a ULV processor will be way too slow for you. The upside to the D430 is the screen is significantly brighter than the D420. The processor is a little faster and you get some nice upgrades like Intel 4965 n wireless along with the latest version of bluetooth. The downside to the D430 or D420 is they don't have a built in DVD which most don't but the Toshiba R500 does. They also don't have the new LED backlit display that you see on the Toshiba R500 or the Dell XPS M1330. The LED screens work great outside. I purchased the D430 over the Toshiba because the memory capacity is higher on the XP version and the keyboard is much better on the Dell. You also get a DVI connector if you order the MediaBase with the D430 which has crisper text and images if connecting to an external monitor. The big thing to remember with ultra portables with low voltage processors is you must not use Vista on it. Vista is so much slower than XP when running basic applications. I don't like that the Dell D430 uses 4200 rpm hard drives. You will notice a slight slowdown over a 5400 rpm drive like on the Toshiba R500, but what I plan to do is limp along with the D430 until 64GB SSD come down in price and then I will switch it out with the 4200 rpm drive and increase the performance by 30-40%. If you are going to do anything more than the basics I described above you better at least look at a Lenovo X61 because you can get a 2Ghz Santa Rosa Processor and have the capability of 4GB of RAM. You would also be able to use Vista if that is what you want. The Toshiba is a very nice laptop but I found too many bugs with this first model and would wait until their 2nd or 3rd rendition before buying it. I have an XPS M1210 right now as well. I absolutely love it except it is pushing 5 lbs and doesn't have near the battery life of the D430 series. The D630 was really fast and inexpensive but pushes 5.5 lbs when you add the 9 cell battery which you will need and that was just way too heavy for me. I am getting my D430 in about 7 days and will post some initial impressions at that time. I hope this info is helpful to you. I just hate to see someone go through all the agony I went through trying all of these laptops.

 

I haven't used one, but it will definitely be slower than the D630. Not just the processor, but the hard drive is quite a bit slower too.

What will you be doing with it? The D430 is designed to be small, light, and get good battery life -- not to be fast.

If you'd like better performance, you could consider the Lenovo Thinkpad X61... and see if HP's business line might have something of interest. Dell XPS M1330 may be worth a look too.

Edit: By the way, I agree with the above poster that the D430's performance is probably "enough" for many people's use, and that you should be able to improve it down the road by getting an SSD if you want.

 

What the home HP at 12.1"? It is cheaper and just as small.

 

No, I said HP's business line. It looks like the nc4400 and tc4400 are the only ones which don't use the ULV processors and so would perform better than the D430. Although their "home" tx1000 tablet might also be worth a look. Honestly none of these HP models are really grabbing me though.