Meet Matt, a senior technician here at Laptop Broker. Like all our technicians, Matt knows his way around a laptop and has upgraded and rebuilt thousands of computers over the years. We asked Matt to review a few laptops he is familiar with and have posted them for our customers to review. We hope you find this information helpful and welcome your feedback.

Dell Latitude D800 Review

Dell Latitude D800 is a bigger and heavier laptop. Rather, the design was not with intention of making a sleek model. Therefore, Dell Latitude D800 perfectly fits the bill of a laptop with almost desktop-like features but with increased portability than a desktop. There is no compromise on performance though. The greatest attraction and plus point of D800 is its huge 15.4” wide-screen display.

Features

Dell Latitude D800 has a 30 GB hard drive with drive speed of 5400 rpm. It has a Pentium M Intel Processor with speed of 1.7 GHz. It offers 512-MB RAM memory and can support up to 4GB RAM maximum memory. Windows XP Professional is the available operating system. This 56kb modem has 10/100 Ethernet connection. It includes power adapter and a battery of standard capacity.

Dell 800 offers three configurations. The high-performance package suits business users the best. The other two configurations can prove useful for home users. Of course, you can customize all available options according to your preferences to suit your requirements. Overall, it is a sturdy machine that can deliver perfectly for everyday work.

Rating: 5/5 

The Looks on the Exterior

Dell Latitude D800 is metallic graphite in color. This 4.3-by-35.8-by-27.4cm laptop weighs around 3.36kg. This does not in the least fit within the bill of a thin and lightweight laptop. The wide display and almost desktop-like features are the major attractions of this laptop with exception of the availability of a touchpad and a pointing stick. There are no keys for operating audio controls. Instead, there are a set of buttons for managing the entire audio output.

Rating: 4/5

Software and Video

Dell Latitude D800 comes with only a 32 MB NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 graphics card. This video does not support 3D games. However, 128MB of video is capable of handling intensive graphics. You can upgrade the video to a 64 or 128 MB GeForce FX direct from Dell. This offers better features.

Installed software is limited and includes Microsoft relevant products or services with Windows XP Professional edition, few multimedia programs from Dell, and trial version of Norton Antivirus. If you want Microsoft office, you have to pay extra and get your required versions. Optional software ranges from Corel WordPerfect Office 11.0 to Microsoft Office Professional. You should be ready to spend on many upgrades, since these become essential for working on your D800.

Rating: 3/5

Ports

Dell Latitude D800 offers many ports. These include Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, four USB 2.0 ports, S-Video out, a serial port, a parallel port, and a standard cable lock port. The huge case can well accommodate all the available ports. The presence of a serial port is helpful for corporate customers still using the old peripherals with this technology.

Dell Latitude D800 also supports a swappable internal bay with CD-RW and DVD drive and optional modules of DVD+R/+RW. Since each of these modules work in perfect compatibility with all the other types of Latitude D-series, you can manage with few modules and use them on any D-series laptop. However, Dell C-series modules will not fit in this D-series chassis.

Dell Latitude D800 comes with installed Bluetooth technology and wireless Ethernet card of 802.11b/g. It additionally includes a smart card reader to store your personal passwords and other important information. However, you require special software for writing on these cards. You can get it at additional costs from Dell. Dell Latitude D800 offers an 8x DVD / 24x-24x-24x CD-RW combination drive. This is the only standard removable storage drive in the system. There is a multitude of ports available in Dell Latitude D800.

Rating: 4/5

Processor and Performance

Dell Latitude D800 offers Intel's fastest Pentium M processor for the first time. Performance levels are excellent with appreciable speeds. This makes D800 a well-designed portable with high-speed.

Rating: 5/5

Keyboard

Dell Latitude D800 can aptly be termed as a large desktop. Keyboard is very similar to that of a desktop. However, there is no functional system to raise the back of the keyboard or the unit to facilitate typing. It has both track point and touch pad with left and right select buttons.

Keyboard offers comfortable working across and along the keys. The mouse buttons of touch pad are little noisy. The area below the spacebar is not enough for smooth working with a pointing stick. Your thumb may hit the spacebar often and disrupt your working.

Rating: 4/5

Screen

The major attraction of Dell Latitude D800 is the huge 15.4in screen with diagonal display. It offers a maximum setting of 1920x1200 in 32-bit color. This screen best suits business presentations and for watching on DVD. It comes with a single button screen release.

The large screen is a major contributing factor to the huge weight of D800. Such a large screen is not typically available in laptops. The best available resolution is 1,680-by-1,050, which is much smaller than other panels of such large screens. In a way, this resolution somewhat lowers the benefits of a huge screen.

The screen has a 16:10 aspect ratio. The maximum screen setting reduces performance levels of Dell Latitude D800 considerably.  This screen does not offer any improved or appreciable performances. You pay for the screen and thereby do not get anything substantial in return.

Rating: 4/5

Battery Life

Battery life is just around three hours. Further, it cannot support the huge screen in a justified manner. Standard battery package available with Dell Latitude D800 is two nine-cell 72 watt-hour batteries. Each battery offers around three hours of power.

The battery life is not very impressive in comparison to other similar laptops It has a high capacity 6.48Ah lithium-ion battery. You can increase battery life by optimizing on illumination level by fifty percent. This can deliver another three-quarter hour of running time on your battery. AC adapter offers good performance.

Rating: 3/5

Service and Support

Dell Latitude D800 comes with three years of warranty for all parts and labor. The company offers a return to depot service available through different options like accidental damage protection and onsite service. You can contact the support personnel through a 24x7 toll-free telephone. You can access their web site and talk with a live technical representative or take part in their consumer and customer forums.

Rating: 5/5

Overall Conclusions

Dell’s Latitude series of notebooks have been among the best-selling categories. It is best described as a large corporate desktop replacement system. Overall, Dell Latitude D800 is a profitable and reasonable buy. Given the price, the features available are basic and prove reasonable.

Dell Latitude D800 does not have hi-fi any packages. You should be ready to spend for every other upgrade and better packages. This laptop ideally meets the needs of an ordinary user without any fancy packages or extended requirements. Position of the integrated smartcard reader below the PC Card slot is not very user-friendly. It proves problematic if you want to insert a smartcard.

Despite its heavyweight, Dell Latitude D800 is a travel-friendly and mobile system. An IntelPRO Wireless 802.11b miniPCI card available through Dell adds to the mobility. Software, video cards, and hard drive options are just ordinary and nothing to rave about. It cannot suit the requirements of high-performance users. Dell should offer a quality video card to offset all limitations of available hard drive options. You can purchase an optional floppy disk drive. However, it is more comfortable to use CDs and DVDs in your laptop than a floppy. 

This laptop is just an okay machine. It offers ordinary functions. Dell does not offer any appealing hard drive configuration with the D800. However, if you aspire for better and more personalized and performance based options, you should go for more upgraded laptops from Dell. Few of the design choices are very ordinary. Although features are extensive, they are similar to those available in other laptops albeit with better adaptation capabilities.

• Superb performance
• Huge display screen
• Integrated smart-card reader
• 802.11b/g wireless

Cons:

• Very much on the heavier side
• Poor battery life