SPCR

Hello,

since I'm moving to Berlin in a few months I'm looking for a rather portable and a not too noisy notebook. I was wondering whether the Dell Inspiron 9400/Latitude D420 (a tad too expensive with Dell Belgium) would be a good choice here. I'm not looking to play 3d games on it (that would be a bonus of course), but it should be an OK performer. It does not have to be perfectly quiet, and I need it to have a nice battery capacity (4+ hours). My budget is around 1000-1500€.

EDIT: Latitude D620 is another option right now. I couldn't find anything about that model on these forums.

Any info on those dells that I consider? (especially noise and battery life)

Another question I have is regarding the noiselevel of the D620 with a duocore, as the datasheet (http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/co ... t_D620.pdf) only has the model with the Pentium M cpu.

The Latitude D620 is ok. They've done a horrible job with the fan controller. I think it's tied mostly to the CPU percent utilization until it's too hot. When the laptop is used (and both cores are utilized at about 30-40%), the bottom side can get very,very hot. The fan and cooling system is subpar (I think all aluminum heat sinks to keep weight down). Hard drive has a silent setting (haven't tried it yet, it's not my laptop). Noise level in general is relatively low (mostly hard drive sound), though definitely would not be considered quiet. Plastic is similar to the Inspiron models, but have a somewhat more deadening sound. IMO, all the new Dell models are all pretty cheesy and plasticy. I would recommend the inspiron choices due to cost (the only benefit of the Latitude would be an option of a docking bay). Battery life on the regular battery is so-so ~2.5hrs.

Thanks for your reply.

I'm looking at the Dell Inspiron e1405 / 640m right now as well. I get a great deal for that one.