Dell Latitude D430- $598 (after $993 Instant Savings)!

Dell Business has the Latitude D430 ultra-portable on clearance starting at $598 (after $993 instant savings)- LINK

The specs are:
1.06GHz Intel Core 2 Solo U2100*
*(533MHz FSB, 1mb L2, Merom, ULV, 5.5W TDP)
Windows Vista Bonus w/ XP downgrade (or Vista Biz)
12.1" WXGA (1280x800) Anti-Glare Display
2GB DDR2 (1GB integrated) 2-DIMMs
120GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
No Optical Drive (D-Bay w/ DVD-RW- $51 upgrade)
Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics
Dell 1395-G wireless card
4-cell Battery (6-cell upgrade- $19)
3-Year Basic Warranty w/ Next Business Day On-Site Service

 

Holy crap...that is an awesome steal.

 

Wow, what a deal for a great ultra-portable notebook!

 

Awesome deal. To bad it's not a dual core CPU though, that would really set it apart from the netbooks. Is the Preliminary Ship Date of 6/2/2009 seem little bit long or is that just me?

 

I was disappointed that the only processor offered is the 1.06GHz Core 2 Solo U2100. I can't find any benchmarks for the U2100, which is based on Merom architecture. The closest I found was the 1.2GHz Core Solo U1400 (based on the original 'Yonah' architecture). It was 15-20% faster than the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, so the U2100 would likely perform similarly.

Most D430s were built with the 1.2GHz Dual-Core U7600 or 1.33GHz Dual-Core U7700. If either of them were available, I'd already have my order in!

As it stands, the U2100 should still perform a bit better than any of the Atom processors. The build quality is also much better than any netbook. Magnesium alloy is used throughout and there's a 3-year warranty to back it up. I doubt most netbooks will survive for 3-years.

 

Good point about the warrenty/build qualty. Come to think of it, with the refurb E4200 starting at around $750 in the Outlet plus the 20% off you can often find I think I'd probably take that route for the new tech and SSD standard.

 

In my experience, the dual core D430's ran hot. This is definitely a good configuration.

Don't even compare this processor to the Atom. The Core architecture has many more features, and it much more optimized. I had a single core (1.2GHz though) D430 for a while and I never really felt any "slowness" in the notebook.

 

Agree to Greg...Good find man really m going to buy it

 

Thanks for the input! You're absolutely right that the Core architecture is a completely different animal than Atom. The 1.2GHz Intel Core Solo was the U1400 (Yonah) according to Dell's tech specs, is that the one you had? The 1.06 U2100 on this model is based on the Merom architecture (Core 2 Solo vs. Core Solo, I think). So the performance difference between the two is probably minimal. Oddly, the Yonah chip had 2mb of L2 cache memory and the Merom only has 1mb of L2.

This is really a nifty, durable ultra-portable for less than $600...and with a 3-yr warranty. It has magnesium-alloy construction and weighs barely 3lbs. It's a great deal!

 

The D430 is now priced starting at $579, but the hard drive is now 80GB 4200rpm instead of the 120GB 5400rpm originally posted- LINK