Dell – Kikuyumoja

Dell Latitude E5450 vs. Dell Latitude E5470

I recently upgraded my office laptop from a Dell Latitude E5450 to a Dell Latitude E5470 – two laptops which appear to be very similar from the outside and don’t differ so much. There are quite a few minor things though that made me go for the upgrade. And please be reminded that I always only buy second hand hardware, unless we’re talking about iPads or iPhones. Consequently, my “new” E5470 is a used laptop that I managed to buy via eBay after a longer search for a good deal and the right CPU.

E5450 vs E5470 — The Dell Latitude E5450 (left) vs E5470 (right)

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HP 840 G1 vs. Dell E7440 vs. Dell E5450

HP Elitebook 840 G1 vs Dell Latitude E7440 vs. Dell Latitude E5450

A visual comparison between three 14″ business laptops that may be of interest to some of you. My Dell Latitude E5450, my Dell Latitude E7440 and an HP Elitebook 840 G1. These are the sort of laptops that are about two to three years old and are sold as used items on eBay. I received the E5450 as a new item though, otherwise it would probably be in a worse shape as the body is not as strong as the one on the e7440. Continue reading “HP 840 G1 vs. Dell E7440 vs. Dell E5450”

Dell Latitude E6220

My backup laptop during the last two years has been an 11,6″ Acer notebook in a netbook size. “Backup”, as in “a second computer that works when machine no.1 doesn’t and else works as a logbook for amateur (ham) radio and other experiments”. Armed with an 1,5 GHz Intel Pentium 987 CPU, 8 GB of RAM and an SSD, it scored okayish on Geekbench and also has a very portable power supply (which in my mind is one of the most important aspects of mobile computing). The Acer, however, lacks VT-x, which prevented Virtualbox from running properly. And the irony is that I also have an identical Acer Chromebook C710 with a partly broken screen that I had bought for spare parts and managed to restore – which has a Celeron 847 CPU and thus an enabled VT-x. Continue reading “Dell Latitude E6220”

Upgrading from a Dell Latitude E6430 to an E5450

My Dell Latitude E6430 has a great performance, has enough room for an extra SSD, has never let me down during the last two years and came as a refurbished, 1yr-old laptop from a dealer in the UK. It also shares the same birthday (date) with me and is just a very, very solid workhorse. The keyboard is great, it has extra keys for volume control, the touchpad does support two-finger scrolls, it has a very durable frame and to clean the vent, I just need to remove 5 screws. Even it’s bulky size and waste of space (= 14″ laptop in the body of a 15″ machine) are okay in the end. I don’t care about that extra inch or the weight. I am a tall person and small laptops look stupid on me. Continue reading “Upgrading from a Dell Latitude E6430 to an E5450”

s/HP/Dell

I have recently upgraded my main computer from an HP EliteBook 6930p to a Dell Latitude E6430. After 7 years of using HP business laptops, the transition to the Dell range is a welcome change. Here’s why:

1. LED screen
Both machines are 14.1″ laptops with a slightly higher screen resolution than the usual (and rather horrible) 1366x768px. While the HP is from 2009 and still came with a 1440x900px screen, this new Dell laptop has 1600×900. A lot of programmers / web workers actually prefer higher screen resolutions, and I meanwhile also, but in the beginning the tiny font was a problem. Since I usually only go for business laptops with docking stations, my main screen is an external 22″ monitor at 1680×1050 – so this screen issue is secondary to me.

What matters though is the illumination technology – which is based on cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) on my old HP. As mentioned in my 2009 review of the HP 6930p vs. the Dell E6400, even the E6400 already had a nice LED screen, just as about half of all Lenovo T400 laptops sold. Of the 6930p sold since 2008/2009, most models only came with the CCFL version – and the few available LEDs only had a WXGA / 12800×800 resolution. It is only recently that someone came up with a hack to install a WXGA+ (1440×900) LED screen from a Lenovo T410 into an HP 6930p. I once thought about doing this hack and already bought the cables, but such 14.1″ LED screens usually sell for ~ 140 EUR alone. These days, second hand 6930p laptops sell for around 200 EUR, so any such investment would be rather stupid.

New laptop, new screen, issue solved.

The bitter truth may be that I should have picked a 14.1″ laptop with a WXGA+ LED screen in 2009 (e.g. the E6400 or the T400). The WXGA++ LED screen on the E6430 is an instant LIKE (even though the CCFL version had better colours).

It seems there are no 14.1″ laptops with really good screens. It’s either 12.5″ (Lenovo), 13.3″ (Apple) or 15.x”/17.x” if you’re interested in something like IPS panels.

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