OK, so I've been messing around with the Dell Latitude D600s for a while now. Figured now was as good a time as any to give my thoughts on them.
So far, they have been pretty solid laptops. They look good if not as cool as one of the newer Apples and are pretty well made. The deluxe leather case has plenty of room for all of the extra peripherals that you tend to need with the laptops as well as room for personal belongings. Could be a bit bigger, but you'd have to buy an aftermarket case for that. The latch on the front was hard to open at first on some of the bags, but once they have been opened a few times it gets easier.
The built in wireless works good, although (and I suspect this is the case for all wireless cards available right now) it takes a while (1-2 minutes) for the wireless card to connect to the network when the laptop is first switched on. For home users this won't be much of an issue, but for corporate users connecting to an NT or Active Directory domain, this is downright annoying. You either have to connect first thing using ethernet cable (kind of defeats the purpose of wireless doesn't it?), wait 1-2 minutes before logging into the system or log in, wait for the wireless to connect and then relog in.
Battery life is OK. They last about 3 hours on a single charge with moderate use. Probably not the greatest out there, but you can always get the second battery that goes in the media bay if you need longer life (of course then you can't play DVDs so you just can't win :D).
The 4 that I got all came with 1.7ghz Pentium M, 1400x1050 14" screen, 512MB memory (2 DIMMS), DVD player (1 system also got a CD-RW), Floppy Drive (primarily for ghosting, but also for legacy support), extra power adapter, optical mouse, usb keyboard (with built in 2 port USB hub), and deluxe leather case as stated above. Cost for each was about $2250 at our discount price.
Also got one D800 which is pretty much the same system but with a wider screen. One note of difference between the D600 and D800, the D800 requires a 95watt power adapter for best performance, but the D600 comes with a ~65watt power adapter, and interestingly enough, the car/ac adapter that came with the D800 was a 65watt unit as well. And of course when you boot up the D800 with the lower power adapter, you get a little error message during BIOS load. Cost for the D800 was about $2450 at our discount price.
Not much else to report. The systems run fast and aren't particularly hot. Plus the fan rarely comes on so they are pretty quiet as well.
If/when I have issues with them other than discussed above, I will post those here as well.
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