Dell Latitude D630, D830 and Latitude D531 Announced

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Dell is today introducing three new laptops, the Latitude D630 and Latitude D830 will both be equipped with the new Intel Santa Rosa chipset, while the D531 budget business notebook comes with an AMD processor.

Latitude D630

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The Dell Latitude D630 is the evolution of the Latitude D620 (D620 Review). The D630 will be a 14.1&quot; widescreen business notebook equipped with the Intel Santa Rosa platform. The processor and chipset upgrade will of course be good news to business consumers, but probably equally good news is the fact that Dell is going to include a brighter display than the proceeding D620, which many people griped about. The standard brightness will be about 220-nits instead of the 180 or so that the D620 came with. The full set of updates that the D630 carries over the D620 are as follows:

• Latest Intel Core 2 Duo processor offering, featuring Santa Rosa platform with 800MHz speed FSB, Intel Turbo memory, faster processor offerings
• Faster 802.11n wireless
• 1394-port (FireWire) added
• Choice of Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or FreeDOS as the OS
• Brighter display, at least 220 nits standard. An improvement over the D620 which was sub-200 nits.
• Advanced hard drive options: Encrypted hard drive, Solid State Drive offerings, Intel Turbo Memory (1GB), Hybrid drives (SSD drives and Hybrid drives will not be offered initially but are planned for later on)
• Two graphics choices: Intel X3100 integrated graphics or NVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M graphics

Outside of these additions to the D620 the D630 remains the same design wise. Which is just fine, the D620 was an attractive notebook and no need to overhaul the design yet. The D630 will come in with a weight of 4.48lbs.

Below is an image that contains detailed specs on the Latitude D531 offering:

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Latitude D830

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Again, the Dell Latitude D830 is simply an evolution of the Latitude D820 (D820 Review). The D830 is a 15.4&quot; widescreen notebook that will use the next generation Intel Santa Rosa platform. Following are the updates and changes the D830 brings over the D820:

• Latest Intel Core 2 Duo processor offering, featuring Santa Rosa platform with 800MHz speed FSB, 802.11n wireless, Intel Turbo memory, faster processor offerings
• Faster 802.11n wireless
• Choice of Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or FreeDOS as the OS
• Three graphics choices: Intel X3100 integrated graphics or NVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M and 140M
• 15.4&quot; WXGA, WSXGA+ UltraSharp and WUXGA UltraSharp
• Added S-video (IR port removed)
• Advanced hard drive options: Encrypted hard drive, Solid State Drive offerings, Intel Turbo Memory (1GB), Hybrid drives (SSD drives and Hybrid drives will not be offered initially but are planned for later on)

Below is an image that contains detailed specs on the Latitude D830 offering:

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Latitude D531

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The Dell Latitude D531 is not an Intel notebook but rather will offer the AMD Turion X2 or AMD Sempron processor. The D531 uses the same build as the D520 Intel based notebook. It has a 14.1&quot; or 15.4&quot; widescreen display and will be the first Latitude notebook to offer the TrueLife glossy display. Some quick specs on the D531 are:

• AMD Sempron or Turion X2 processor
• Microsoft Windows Vista OS
• Gigabit Ethernet
• TPM 1.2 and Wave Embassy Trust Suite security
• Wireless 802.11n, Bluetooth
• Widescreen 14.1&quot; WXGA, 15.4&quot; WXGA or 15.4&quot; WXGA+ with TrueLife
• Weight: 5.1lbs

Below is an image that contains detailed specs on the Latitude D531 offering:

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The starting price for the D531 is $839 with the Sempron processor and $879 with a Turion X2 processor.

 

I'm glad they updated the looks of the 5 series. I especially like that it's widescreen now. Having used a D520 here at work, I was really surprised by how durable it was for a budget laptop. The only thing that bothered me in fact was the low resolution screen, but that doesn't seem to be as big of a problem with the D531. It's definitely one of Dell's better AMD options (and really the only one besides the terrible E1501).

 

where is Vista Ultimate 64-bit on these laptops ?
Santa Rosa and still no 64-bit OS ?

 

The D630 on their website only has the 3100, not the Quadro. Deal Breaker for me!

 

props for dell being the first ones to sell santa rosa laptops.

 

I have yet to see it on Dell's website. Am I missing something?

And about the screen... "Maximum resolution of WSGA+ (1900x1200)"

First of all, what is WSGA+? I'm assuming they're referring to WSXGA+, but that's a resolution of 1680x1050, not 1900x1200. I would expect them to be WSXGA+ screens, because 1900x1200 on a 14" screen would be nuts.

 

Those are so ugly...look like my 5 year old dell laptop.

 

What a shame: still no expresscardslot in D630, but a death old PCMCIA

In wonder when they will get available in The Netherlands.

 

I have been waiting for this!

Yes, no expresscard, but it still work for the next 3 years. Whats good about expresscard using the EVDO on it? Any speed increase? I heard only save battery life?

I still have not see the D630 on Dell website.

I like the brighter screen now! I have a D620 last year that I return back to Dell 45 days later! It hurt my eye so bad.

I hope for a good review of D630 soon! Thanks!

 

I also don't see it on Dell's site yet. Maybe it'll show up later. The T61 just showed up on Lenovo's site not too long ago.

 

Oh man, I can't wait for the flood of reviews from HPs, Lenovos, Dells, and all the others!

 

It doesn't show up in all the pages, just in the medium/large business section for now

 

It appears that the nVidia options aren't available. I wonder who's dragging their feet here... Dell or nVidia?

 

Booooring.... zzzz. 800mhz fsb, but no 800mhz memory offered. DX10 graphics cards that couldn't possibly push a real DX10 application. I'm sure some people will appretiate the brighter screen but they didn't really seem to change a whole lot about the Latitudes. Wake me up when the new Inspirons hit... zzzz.

 

Yah, I dont really need such a fast bus.

I just need a brighter screen and good viewing angle.

 

About the D531, if you choose the 14.1" screen, it still use the same chassie as the 15.4" laptop? Only you see more fillers on the side of the screen? If you know what I am talking about.

 

yawn...dell out done by lenovo...

 

The D630 are expensive now.

I like the D630 layout. You can see other notebook have CAT5, power cord, etc all lay out on the side.

That is is why I still like the Latitude.

 

Where is the D430?
Honestly, Santa Rosa is out and only HP announces an ultra-portable 12-incher (which looks quite promising by the way even if I am not a huge fan of HPs plastic design)? Am I missing anything? Where go all these sweet U7x00-processors? Sony, where is the G21-announcment for Europe? Samsung, where is the long-awaited Q50. Look, all we need in an ultraportable is out now: LED-screens, SSDs, Core2Duos with a low energy-profile... Come on!

 

agreed s4iscool, the new lenovo's are much more appealing. If they slap an 8600 in a thinkpad, consider it sold!

 

Dell has Lenovo beat on the hard drive sizing/speed... the T61's fastest drive is only 100GB @ 7200rpm vs Dell's 120 & 160 @ 7200rpm.

Keep going back and forth between the T61 and the D830... will have to see what Lenovo comes out with in the T61p.

 

Since it seems like there's some mad misinformation going on around here, I'll copy and paste from a post I made earlier.

Turbo Memory and draft N are probably the two biggest improvements, although some power saving features (lower power state, FSB throttling) may also help. AnandTech's review casts a bit of a shadow on Turbo Memory though. Their tests showed it actually made performance worse (which makes me believe there was something wrong with the sample). On the other hand, it seems like idle power consumption is way down from the Napa platform.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2985&p=1

 

Still no show of D630 on Dell small business.

I see the D620 are $450 off if you price $1800.

Man, thats not exactly a sell to get rid of old things.

 

The German Dell website now has the new models up for sale as well. Prices are quite reasonable!

Let's hope the screen of the D630 is better then the D620 in practice and not just on paper.

 

oh man, Centrino Pro wont be available until autumn
when an updated D630 c becomes available
it will have iAMT support

 

how much "later on". SSD is the only reason I was waiting for a Dell.

 

In the specsheet Dell recommends a 7200rpm harddrive for "Performance" while the SSD is recommended for "Reliability". So unless you want to use your notebook on the north pole or jump out of plane with it, you still need a good old spinning disk.

 

When are these damn things coming out?! I really want to buy a laptop but it seems like the T61 is the better choice, as there are no others...

EDIT: I found this page:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/latit?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied
It is the Higher Education section. They are freaking expensive! ($1600 for the basic D630!)

 

The SSD drives should offer a substantial performance boost regardless of what Dell says. The transfer speeds might not be quite as high, but the random access time is tens if not hundreds of times better than your average laptop drive. Were talking 0.1 ms vs 14.0+ ms.

 

Don't believe that will be for a while. The thing costs nearly $500.

The technology is far too much into its early stages to do an exponential leap compared to the current drives.

 

No it isn't.

The Sandisk SSD drive is rumored to be even faster and Samsung has a pending refresh (and addition of 64gb version to the lineup) that is supposed to further increase performance.

 

You couldn't be more wrong.

Advantages

While 32GB isn't a whole ton of storage space, the drive is targeted at mobile users that prefer reliability, speed and data security over sheer storage volume. Usually these people are willing to pay a price for those advantages, here's an outline of the advantages:

* Lower power consumption than regular mechanical hard drive, drives can be 50% more efficient than a regular hard drive as it uses 0.9 watts compared to the 1.9 watts of many regular hard drives
* Better reliability, SSD drives are more reliable than a regular hard drive (on average SSDs deliver 2 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF))
* Better performance, data moves to and from the SSD drive almost 100 times faster than a regular hard disk that use a mechanical head for reading and writing data, some example speed readings are
o Read rate of 67 MB/s
o Random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second for a 512-byte transfer
o Windows Vista boots in about 30 seconds and can access files at an average speed of 0.11ms, a regular hard drive takes 48 seconds to boot Vista and 17 milliseconds to access a file
* Cooler and quieter running as there is no motor, bearings or moving head mechanism.
* More secure with data as a drop situation is less risky for losing than the same situation with a regular mechanical hard drive

Although 32GB is a small amount of space, there's certainly an audience of buyers out there that would prefer this small and fast hard drive over a 200GB large and slow regular hard drive. They'd also be willing to pay the price premium. For some, all of the factors listed above make the higher price yet lower capacity worth it -- sometimes storage space isn't everything.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3658

 

For many of the announced SSDs, throughput has actually been lower than top-of-the-line 7200RPM drives. However, access times are obviously extremely low compared to mechanical drives. That's where you get the performance benefits, not from throughput.

 

Solid state hard drives are far more durable than standard hard drives.

 

The dell.com site states when building either D830 the following for graphics:
The Intel ® GMA X3100 integrated graphics balances good graphics performance and battery consumption with low initial cost. For more powerful graphics performance, consider the NVIDIA ® 110M and 120M graphics options available on Latitude D620 and D820.

Am I missing something if I wanted to order a D830 with an Nvidia card? the only option on the web for an 830 is the Intel??

Thanks.

 

I think the nVidia Quadros are slow coming out of the door, because they seem to be delayed or not offered yet on several laptops.

 

they are out!!

 

Not in the USA.

 

yeah they are, i just saw them on the website

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/latit_d630?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/latit_d830?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04