Review: Dell Latitude E6500 notebook PC

The E6500 is one of the latest models in Dell’s long-established Latitude family of business notebooks, sporting Intel’s latest Centrino 2 mobile technology and some interesting mobile security options.

It’s not exactly stylish, but its satin black-brushed magnesium alloy chassis will make it stand out in a room full of the normal corporate models. It weighs 3.15kg, which is at the higher end of what is comfortable to lug around all day.

Powered by one of Intel’s latest 1,066MHz FSB Core 2 Duo processors, the P9500 (2.53GHz) and backed by 4GB of PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 memory, the E6500 will make short shrift of everyday business tasks.

Since it uses the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Business, all 4GB of memory is available for the operating system to use. It is highly configurable and you can choose from a range of more powerful processors and memory options.

Dell’s choice of graphics card, a Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M with 256MB of dedicated GDDR3 video memory, is something of a surprise since you would normally associate this with a workstation, not a business notebook. However, it’s better than being stuck with the integrated graphics. Images are outputted to a rather impressive screen; the 15.4in display has a 1,440x900 pixel native resolution.

For an extra £150, you can choose a WUXGA screen which has a 1,920x1,200 resolution and, if your budget will stretch to it, it is well worth it for the extra desktop real estate it will give you. The screen itself is supported by a pair of study hinges.

There are plenty of ports and slots around the sides of the chassis. The left side holds two stacked USB ports, VGA port, a 54mm Express card slot and a 5-in-1 card reader. The right side is home to the 8x DVD writer, a PC Card slot, two more stacked USB ports, a four-pin Firewire port, two audio ports and the on/off/seeker switch for the Wifi.

Security is clearly something Dell is focussing on. Not only does the E6500 have a Smart Card slot, but it also features a TPM 1.2 (Trusted Platform Module) chip on the motherboard and a finger print reader housed in top of the chassis. Dell also offers a Laptop Tracking and Recovery service (£15 for one year), but for extra protection it also offers this service with remote data delete (£20 for one year), enabling Dell to delete the contents of a hard drive once the stolen notebook goes back online.

The keyboard feels well made and is easy to type on, but it doesn’t have a separate numeric keypad built in. Equally, the trackpad is a joy to use with just the right amount of sensitivity and features vertical and horizontal scrolling – if you don’t like trackpads there’s the alternative of a trackpoint in the middle of the keyboard.

Our review sample came with a six-cell 56Whr battery. Our Mobilemark battery benchmarking application turned its nose up at the 64-bit operating system, but when we played a DVD on it the E6500 managed to keep going for just over three hours. For an additional £95, you can get a nine-cell 85Whr battery.
Dell was unable to provide us with an E-Value code for this model, so our pricing is based on Dell’s online store at time of going to press.

The Latitude E6500 is a good all-round business notebook, albeit one with a hefty price tag. But with the data theft a hot topic, we can see many being attracted by its added security features.

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