Dell Latitude D510
Notebook Reviews > Dell Latitude > D510

Latitude D510 is the choice to go for when you are desperate for a business notebook, yet can't afford the towering price tag on most.

With Latitude D510, you still get to enjoy the D-Family Technologies as available in other high end business notebooks by Dell, but at a very affordable price. For those unfamiliar, these include: Strike Zone to take care of accidental mishaps with hard drive, Express Charge to minimize the time required to recharge your notebooks' battery, Tough Tri-Metal Chassis to protect the sensitive hardware components and not to forget the great Undock & Go technology that caters for your wireless connectivity needs in a flash.

The base model comes with a 1.40GHz Celeron M Processor. Don't be intimidated by the word Celeron there, as this one comes with 1MB of level 2 cache that improves its performance. However this does not make up for the fact that the installed 533MHz RAM will only operate here at 400MHz speed. Basically, it's not as bad as previous Celeron's, yet can't be competing with a Pentium M based model.

By the way, 1.73GHz Pentium M is available should you opt for the Enhanced or Advanced model at a slightly higher price. This will definitely boost the battery lifetime too. A 6-cell 53WHr Smart Li Ion battery is standard on this model and you also have an option to add a modular bay battery.

The Latitude D510 model features a 14.1" XGA display, good enough for general business applications and presentation purposes. An integrated Intel Media Graphics 900 card suffices well. Beware that you are limited to a 1024 x 768 pixels resolution.

Other specs include 256/512 MB of RAM, 40 GB hard disk with 5400 RPM, 24X CD-ROM or a Combo Drive and no unpleasant surprises with the I/O ports, except that there's no card reader in this notebook.

Both the options for wired or wireless connectivity are open. For the former, you have an integrated 56k modem and an Ethernet card. The choices are wide for the latter one as apparently many protocols have been maintained; even Dell's TrueMobile 350 BlueTooth is an option.

Overall, it does what it is designed to - run basic business applications at an economical cost. However, checking out what Dell's rivals are selling for this price ain't a bad suggestion either.