Dell Latitude ATG D620 Notebook Review
Dell last year released the 14″ screen Latitude D620 business notebook. While the D620 was well built with a magnesium frame, it wasn’t tough enough to be called a semi-rugged notebook. After popular demand from business customers, Dell is today introducing a new semi-rugged version of the D620, dubbed the Latitude ATG D620. The ATG D620 features an enhanced protective casing and super bright outdoor viewable screen.
At the core the Dell Latitude ATG (All Terrain Grade Quality) D620 is essentially the same notebook as the Latitude D620, but bears extra armor, port protection, hard drive protection and a stunningly bright 500nit screen allowing for viewing and work outdoors. The semi-rugged aspect D620 is quite obviously geared towards professionals that have to frequently work outdoors and need to be able to see a screen even when in the sun. Whether it be at a construction site, oil field or NFL Combine. Builders, engineers and professional sport player scouts like to be able to use laptops while outside and doing work.
The ATG D620 is best described as looking like the original D620, but on steroids. Several areas of protection have been added. You??™ll right away notice the durable black textured paint areas added around the edges. A laptop that gets pulled around a lot gets scratched along the edges, with these hard plastic texture paint panels in place the lid is essentially scratch resistant.
The ATG D620 also differs from the regular D620 in that there are plastic or rubber covers for the port areas. There are many ports on the back of the D620, so a large plastic cover snaps into place there to cover all of these ports and the docking port on the bottom of the laptop. On the right side a small rubber insert is used to cover the USB ports there. These covers prevent dust from getting in and corroding the notebook internals.
The D620 adopts a widescreen format, a feature we??™re seeing more and more in business notebooks these days. A widescreen allows you to more easily have two windows open next to each other at the same time. Side-by-side comparison of documents, web pages or spreadsheets is an example of common business tasks more easily done on a widescreen.
The screen hinge on the Latitude ATG D620 has been beefed up relative to the standard D620; it??™s very sturdy and solid feeling. The lid of this notebook is also thicker so that it offers more protection than the standard D620. In the same vein, the latch that holds the screen down is more substantial and rugged. The screen itself has a glass overlay to protect the actual LCD from such things as blowing sand. I know what you??™re thinking, ???finally, a laptop I can take to the beach??™.
The keyboard on the ATG D620 is designed to be spill resistant. It seems that a tray beneath the keys is being used to prevent liquids that are spilled from seeping into internal components.
A notebook couldn??™t be called rugged if it didn??™t have some type of extra hard drive protection. The ATG D620 has Dell??™s typical StrikeZone shock absorber, but in addition to this it has an extra magnesium and rubberized layer of casing. In order to fit these extra cushioning layers in Dell had to move to a smaller and slower 1.8??? hard drive. For workers in the field that value data protection over performance, this is an acceptable tradeoff.
All of this extra armor and protection on the D620 of course comes at the cost of adding weight. While the regular D620 weighs a bit over 5 lbs the ATG D620 starts at around 6.3 lbs, but with an extended life 9-cell battery and optical drive will be more like 7lbs.
In terms of looks, the ATG D620 is extremely muscular and industrial looking. Think of it as the SUV of the laptop world. It may not look as sleek as Acer??™s Ferrari line, but it does better in off road conditions. And while the charcoal grey, silver and black coloring is industrial looking, it can be considered professional as well.
Finally, checkout the new Dell badge on the lid of the notebook. It has been spruced up a bit from the regular D620 and looks more like the badge that appears on the XPS series of Dell notebooks. I like it.
Processor and Performance
One complaint many people have about semi-rugged or rugged laptops is that the performance is always a step behind mainstream notebooks. If you checkout the Panasonic ToughBook line of rugged notebooks you??™ll find a wide selection with Core Duo processors, but you won??™t currently find an offering with the latest Core 2 Duo. Thankfully Dell is offering up to a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo processor that supports up to 667MHz speed memory. You can configure up to 4GB of RAM. The bottleneck of the system will be the slow 4200RPM 1.8??? hard drive. If you don’t want the extra protection, you could always go with a non-shock mounted 2.5″ type hard drive.
The Core 2 Duo processor is the king of mobile processors at this point in time. It offers two processing cores and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit written software programs. Perceived performance is excellent, so long as you have 1GB or more of RAM you??™ll find many programs open instantaneously and performance in tough rendering applications such as CAD design will really move. Dell is not offering dedicated graphics in this model, so gaming and certain 3D apps will not do well with just the Intel GMA 950 integrated chipset.
The OS installation on the ATG D620 is fairly clean, meaning there aren??™t tons of unwanted processes running in the background. Norton is pre-installed along with PowerDVD and some Google applications such as Google Desktop search. They??™re easy enough to uninstall if you don??™t want them or prefer alternative software. More than likely many companies buying the ATG D620 will have their own customized image for this laptop so performance may vary based upon what software your business decides to stick you with.
One of the most important parts of a notebook is of course the ease of input, meaning how easy it is to type and move the cursor around the screen. The D620 keyboard is full sized and comfortable to use. While I don??™t have a regular D620 to directly compare it to, this ATG keyboard feels like it has a little more flex and give to it than the regular D620. I think this is because Dell has added a tray underneath that makes the keyboard spill proof, but in turn gives the keyboard a bit of a different feel. The added spill proof tray also makes it a bit noisier if you punch keys hard like I do.
My favorite part about the D620 is that it has dual navigation via a touchpad or pointing stick input. I find the pointing stick to be faster and easier to use than the touchpad, but if you prefer a touchpad then it’s there and is a generous size for easy use. The dual mouse buttons have a nice feel and positioned so that if you use the pointing stick you would use the uppermost buttons and if you use the touchpad you would use the lowermost buttons.
Added to the ATG D620 is a task light to illuminate the keyboard at night. You can toggle these lights on and off by holding Fn + Right Arrow. Dell chose red for the lighting, which struck me as odd at first. But it makes sense because red is the color used for critical or important systems (such as emergency lighting) that operate in low-light or night-time conditions. This is because rod cells in the human eye (the type we use for night vision) do not respond to red and therefore it does not interfere in the eye’s ability to focus in dim environments.
The Latitude ATG D620 is really going to appeal to companies that deploy Dell Latitude notebooks to office workers, but also need a solution for field workers. Until now, a utility company that used Latitude D620 notebooks for their desk bound energy traders would have to buy laptops from a different company for their crew out repairing downed wires. Now the IT shop can deploy ATG D620 notebooks to those field workers and use the same image and consistent equipment and peripherals. This will save on costs and headaches.
Business concerns aside, users of the ATG D620 will be smitten by the excellent 500 nit outdoor viewable screen. Even some consumers that like to work outside and tend to throw their laptop around might be tempted by the rugged aspects of the ATG D620. The performance and flexibility of the machine is very good, and it even looks better than the typical lunchbox look you see with other semi-rugged notebooks.
Add comment February 22nd, 2007
