Dell’s Latitude range of laptop computers are targeted squarely in the mid range business user segment. Also known as D-Series, the Latitudes come with reinforced magnesium alloy frames, water resistant keyboards, a dedicated phone support queue and the essentials 3-year Next-Business Day warranty. Dell Latitudes now also come with an ExpressCharge feature that charges your battery up to 80% within 1 hour. Common to the D-Series is the D-module bay which allows for easy swapping of a variety of optical drives, spare battery and second HDD.
The Latitude D430 is Dell’s road warrior machine that is highly portable and lightweight, sporting a 12.1 inch widescreen XGA display and weighing only 1.4kg. The full magnesium allow frame offers strength and rigidity to the D430, and is further enhanced by Dell’s StrikeZone protection under the HDD area. Powering the D430 is Intel’s Centrino Duo platform with a lowe-voltage U7600 Core 2 Duo CPU running at 1.2GHz at its core. This also means that the graphics are powered by a standard embendded Intel GMA950 chip.
Like all Dell computers, you can specify a variety options when ordering the Latitude D430. The standard feature include Bluetooth, built-in phone modem, Gigabit Ethernet and a decent 1GB of DDR2-667 RAM built-in. There is one available slot for memory expansion, and our review unit was configured with another 1GB in this slot for a total of 2GB of RAM. For storage, the Latitude D430 has the option of using a Solid State Drive (SDD). The SanDisk UATA 5000 SSD is a mere 32GB in size, but offers increased reliability and durability thanks to no moving parts. Otherwis, you can can order standard hard drives from 80GB to 120GB.
Wireless LAN is pretty much a necessity for a mobile computer like the Latitude D430 Here you have the option of the old Intel 3945 a/b/g adapter or the new 4965 a/g/n adapter. The new adapter should simply be standard, so look out for this option when ordering online.
The Latitude D430 has three USB ports and IEEE3945 (Firewire). There is also an Integrated SD-card reader and the option to have a fingerprint reader below the touchpad. For external displays, you can connect via the VGA connector. The D430 is also compatible with Dell’s D-Dock which give you ore connectors and video outputs.
Being a highly portable laptop, the keyboard layout squeezes many buttons like key arrow keys and function keys, but manages to maintain full sized keys for the main QWERTY keys. The Latitude D430 comes with both a touchpad and nipple-pointer in the layout.
Performance wise, the Latitude D430 didn’t fare so well in our PCMark05 benchmark. The overall score was 2,465 points with the CPU doing 2,993 points. This is expected considering the lower speed and Ultra Low Voltage nature of the U7600 CPU. Practically speaking, however, the CPU did reasonably well under Windows Vista with no extraordinary slow-down during normal use like browsing and word processing. The graphics score was rather disappointing, however, with only 682 points from the GMA950 chip. The SDD storage got 3,127 points from the benchmark. This is on par with any other system we’ve tested, but we were expecting better performance from the SSD drive. The PCMark05 test performs an average of various scenarios. In our daily use however, the low random-access time of the SSD resulted in rather responsive performance during bootup and navigating around Windows. Accessing many fragments of system files across the disk will not slow down the SSD.
As a result of the compact size and low weight, the Latitude D430 lost a built-in optical drive. Instead, you get an external D-module bay which fits your choice of CD/DVD drives. This D-module bay is also used to accommodate other D-modules from Dell like secondary batteries or hard disk. On its own, the Latitude D430 is very lightweight and compact, but if you need to use an optical drive, you will still need to lug around the external D-module bay.
The Latitude D430 may be a little too pricey for home user, but for business, it is surely a
very capable machine. The premium features of the Latitude series along with the option for SSD storage make the Latitude D430 a laptop you can rely on out in the field.
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