Dell Latitude E6400
Rental/day 85.47yuan Rental/week 239.32yuan Rental/month 299.15yuan +17% VAT	Processor	Core2 P8600, 2.4GHz
	Memory	2GB DDR2 800
	Hard drive	250GB SATA7200
	Media drive	DVD-RW
	Screen	14.1'LED 1280*800
	Network interface	1000M/802.11BGN
	I/O	4xUSB 2.0，VGA-Out，E-SATA，IEEE1394，Express Card slot
	Battery	6 cell
	Weight	1950g

The Dell Latitude E6400 is a 14"laptop targeted towards businesses that need good performance, solid design,and a commonality of parts for an entire workforce. This notebook competesagainst such notebooks as the HP EliteBook 6930p and FujitsuLifeBook S7220. The E6400 offers a wide range of hardware configurations, aswell as Solid State Drives (SSDs) for the businesses that require extremeruggedness and extreme performance.

Build and Design

Unlike the previous generation of Dell Latitude noteboks that featuredrounded edges and curves, the Dell Latitude E-series features "down tobusiness" industrial design. The chassis is entirely made of magnesiumalloy with plenty of 90-degree edges and sharp angles. While the look isreasonably modern, it's also a little "old school" and could bemistaken for a 5-year old laptop from a distance. Still, the build and designspeak volumes in terms of the overall durability of this notebook.

During testing no plastic creaks or squeaks could be heard thanks to the magnesiumalloy structure. The entire bottom shell is a metal alloy which gives thelaptop a strong footprint on your desk, and gives enough strength to resistbending if you hold the laptop by the edge of the palm rest walking around theroom. The only downside to the chassis is that the alloy is thinner thanexpected in a few locations (more on that later). Another minor issue wenoticed is that the bottom access panel on the E6400 really needs one extrascrew on the bottom right corner next to the hard drive bay. The magnesiumallow base plate smacks up against that corner of the notebook and makes anannoying metal tapping noise if you're typing on an uneven surface.

The heavy use of magnesium alloy carries over to the lid of the notebook,which has an attractive "brushed metal" design that isn't actuallybrushed metal but rather a painted surface. This immitation brushed metalsurface is available in black, blue, or red to give businesses (and theiremployees) a way to customize the look of their business notebook. The finishitself seems quite durable and should survive years of use and abuse.

In addition to the overall design of the notebook itself, it's worthmentioning the new docking station for the E-series Latitude notebooks. Mostbusinesses will likely use the E6400 with a docking station and an externalmonitor so that employees can have a mobile laptop when traveling and have a"desktop" computer at the office. Dell made a few changes to theLatitude docking station this year. In addition to relocating some ports theyalso added an extra USB port on the side and provide new DisplayPortconnections for the latest external displays.

Screen

The matte WXGA+ (1440x900) screen on the Dell Latitude E6400 is absolutely beautiful. No dead pixelswere found during testing, and backlight bleed while noticed on some darkscreens was minimal. Colors were vibrant despite the matte screen and theadditional benefit of matte screens is the lack of reflection in an officeenvironment. Wide viewing angles made the screen look sharp even at oddlycontorted angles. Backlight adjustment was very broad, allowing me to adjustlow enough for darker room settings, and bright enough to still be readable insunlight or a bright office.

One minor negative regarding the screen is that the notebook lid offersless than ideal protection for the screen. Although the allow lid is quitedurable and should protect the lid from most impacts, the thin allow does flexand created "ripples" on the screen whenever pressure was allied tothe back of the screen  The release latch was smooth and unlike mostlatches on budget notebooks required little effort to release.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard and palm rest structure is solid, but the thin alloy used inthe palmrests does flex a little when pressure is applied. Pressing down veryfirmly, the keyboard suffers from virtually zero flex and is a nice improvementover the older Dell Latitude D630.

The keyboard is very comfortable to type on, and gave just the rightamount of response for each key press. Key travel is similar to most businessnotebooks with just a bit less clicking sound than what we hear on ThinkPads inour office. The keyboard layout was not cramped at all, and the keyboardbacklighting allowed for typing in a dark room.

The Alps touchpad has a nice smooth texture and is reasonably responsive,but could be improved. Lag time and accuracy were worse than what we've seen onmany competing business notebooks. The size of the touchpad surface was largeenough for comfortable control and the two touchpad buttons spanned the fulllength of the touchpad, and each had a soft click when pressed. Thetouchpoint/trackpoint located in the center of the keyboard is a niceimprovement over the touchpoint on the older D630, but again we found thetouchpoints on business notebooks from Lenovo and HP to be more responsive andaccurate. On the bright side, the touchpoint includes three mouse buttons forbetter control with tabbed web browsing.

Next to the touchpad on the right palmrest you'll also notice a SmartCardcontact reader ... allowing employees to use their SmartCard security badgeswith their notebook without having to physically insert the SmartCard insidethe notebook.

The Dell Latitude E6400 as configuredhas more than enough speed and storage space to handle most users needs. Thehigh-end Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 and nVidia Quadro NVS 160M combined with areasonably fast hard drive make this laptop an excellent performer, for bothlightweight multimedia uses and number crunching.

Speakers

The speakers on the E6400 were better than average for most laptops,comparable to speakers found on most small midrange televisions. While lowerbass was lacking, volume levels were quite loud, and distortion at peak levelswas not present. The speakers also have a great location that directs sound upand toward the user.

Speaking of great locations, it's also worth mentioning that thefingerprint reader is now located beneath the right speaker. This is a muchbetter location than the palmrest or in between the touchpad buttons (wheremost manufacturers put the fingerprint reader) because it means you're lesslikely to accidentally trigger the fingerprint reader when you pick up thenotebook or use the touchpad buttons.

Input and Output ports

Port selection was not a problem, although I would have enjoyed seeing a HDMIport, but the inclusion of a DisplayPort is a reasonable compromise andprobably more useful in a corporate environment. Going around the notebook, wefind the following ports

Conclusion

The Dell Latitude E6400 is a great performerand a solid replacement for the Dell Latitude D630. It seems to be built wellenough to be thrown around in day-to-day use, and it's clear that Dell istrying to improve the Latitude line and offer compelling features ... like19-hour battery life.

We really couldn't find any major reason to dislike the E6400, but thereare a number of "minor annoyances" that could make some businesseslook elsewhere. As we mentioned, although the E6400 proved to be quite durbaleduring our tests, the alloy chassis is thin in some locations which makes thenotebook "feel" less durable than it actually is. We're certain thethinner alloy sections where used in order to keep weight as low as possible,but flex is something you don't want to see in a business notebook.

Overall, corporate clients who are looking for the next generation ofbusiness notebooks from Dell have plenty of reasons to buy the E6400. Dell madeevery effort to improve the Latitude family, and the E6400 is a great 14-inchbusiness notebook. That said, there is some pretty strong competition such asthe Lenovo ThinkPad T400 and HP EliteBook 6930p ... and thosenotebooks might prove to be better alternatives for some.