Dell Latitude E6220 12.5in Core i7 notebook Dell's Latitude E6220 is a typical workhorse, designed to be solid, dependable and ever so slightly boring. However, Dell is aiming this compact model more at small businesses rather than large organisations. And the increasing numbers of people who, like myself, are self-employed. A touch of style and being just 1in thin and …
Tell me about it. What's the point of all that i7 horse power if you're going to shackle it to Intel's pathetic graphics chip. Given the thickness of the casing they should have had plenty of room to squeeze a dedicated graphics card from nVidia or AMD in there (Dell's Alienware brand has an 11" system with an i7 and a decent dedicated graphics chip).
The business class Dells, Lenovos, and HPs are always pricey... my Elitebook (i5, integrated graphics) probably cost my company $1,500. IMHE, I have found them to be more reliable than their consumer grade kin, but at the same time I wouldn't be using one of these if work didn't foot the bill.
We need all that processing power to chew through all the craptastic management software they sling at us with our corporate builds. My i5 with the company image runs like an i3 with a clean install - with luck a machine like this might get me into i5 territory : )
You beat me to it. Although the form factor is small, I personally do not equate that resolution to a "business" laptop. The T60 with it's 1400x1050 would be the lowest I consider to be a decent resolution on a laptop I use for work.
However, to be fair, I work in engineering, a friend who's a CA is quite happy with his netbook when he needs to travel to a clients office. He also has another system in his office hooked to a 22inch display for his main work.
Being a Latitude, I'm assuming this would support a docking station and it's graphics chip can support an external display with a resolution of at least 1600x900? If not then the price is not justified.
Well, there'd be 2 reasons to increase the prices:
- they're a bit skint these days, so extra margin might be useful. And this "niche" unit might do to the trick, as it's easier to markup.
- They see people like samsung whacking up the prices of tables and premium books to equal or greater than Apple, and getting away with it. Why not try it themselves?
Caveat: I actually quite look the look of this, even though it is a Dell. An i7 in a small form factor. If only it had DX11 and a smaller 11' screen, it would be right up there come the summer and my laptop gets replaced.
Don’t forget that with the DELL you'll have at least 3yr NBD onsite support so if it breaks a little man comes out and fixes it next day. One of our users insisted on getting some little Toshiba thingy (really a home laptop rather than corporate) because it was small and flash, etc went wrong and he was without a laptop for 2 weeks whilst it was repaired. Anther users a few years ago insisted on getting a Sony Vile (sorry Vaio) for the same reasons, anyway packed in 1 month outside its 1yr warranty and Sony weren’t interested and quoted him something stupid to get it fixed.
Really? Obviously you pay Dell and Toshiba more for next day onsite service than their return to base service, but I never met a Toshiba notebook which couldn't be paired with a NBD onsite warranty. Toshiba's Up and Running warranty is even better... It's not foolproof, but you don't have to wait for an engineer, they'll just attend and stick your hard drive in a replacement chassis.
Of course, you can't help users who want to save money by choosing a cheaper service contract which doesn't offer the support they need!
however, i have the advantage of not having paid for them.
the missus's i5 based one has more than enough poke, and docker carries dual DVI and display ports, plus the usual usb, ps/2, gig lan, so screw blunderbolt lameness.
anyway, the otherhalf loves it. small, discreet, and massive battery life with the extended battery.
my place dishes out the 14" screen i5 varient of these.
quite impressed with how snappy these little things are. started to become desktop replacements with the dockers for some departments.
"when it comes to rolling up your sleeves and updating various websites, using content management systems and working on long documents, you need a proper keyboard"
And more than a 768 pixel high screen!
Sounds like a bit of a premium netbook to me. You could treat yourself to a Sony SE series lappy with a full HD screen and an i7 for less £££...
Well.... yes. My phone has a 3.5 inch screen and has a much higher pixel count per inch than this.
The new ipads (10 inch) are rumoured to have much higher resolution than this. So yes - resolution is important. The resolutions that new laptops seem to be pushing these days is a joke - and people seem to be buying them on the basis that its High Definition.
High Definition my arse!
On the general spec of this machine - yes it is badly configured. Paying that much for something that is no more real use than a £400 netbook with NBD support.
The only reason to buy a similarly priced/speced machine is:
1. Money to burn
2. Getting a cut of the purchase price
3. Your stupid.
You can get a much better laptop of a similar size from Dell themselves.
@Talic "To those who would like it alot higher, could you stare at 1920x1080 over a 12.5" area?
everything would be so small and just cause frustration"
- You can increase the size of the fonts if you have poor eyesight, or don't need to process a lot of information visually.
Even for web browsing - i find a low resolution very frustrating.
If you're buying Latitudes, phone up and the salespeople have lots of scope to discount them.
Buying a cheap Vostro laptop, you browse the dell website and throw in the 50-75 quid off coupon code.
It isn't a netbook. It has an i7, a decent matt screen and 3 year NBD onsite warranty. Also the unadvertised advantage that after 3-4 years because corporates retire their machines, there's tonnes of cheap second ones on ebay, should you want to swap parts.
If you want gaming, you don't buy one of these.
I suppose the best reason not to buy one is the ivy bridge upgrade that the non-corporate (XPS etc) laptops will be getting in April.
I think that this is because £1149 is a lot of money for a laptop of this spec- and as many people have pointed out - it is not that capable.
It is only of real use for simple office applications, web browsing and playing low resolution videos. It has insufficient resolution for many business practices that require a lot of desktop real-estate and the graphics processor is not sufficient to drive a higher resolution monitor.
Its only strength appears to be number crunching since it has a good spec processor. Most number crunching applications in a business environment that I know of use workstations or servers or high end laptops with high resolution screens and capable graphic capabilities - this laptop does not match any of these categories. So I concur with many of the comments on this forum; It is, mostly, overpriced for something that can run MS Word - in a limited way.
For those that remember the Hitch-Hikers guide - this mini - "Deep Thought" computer could run for many years crunching numbers to come up with the number "42" but that would be about the extent of it.
You mentioned all other ports & options, but not the Smart Card Reader.
AFAIK ALL Dell Latitude machines since at least the D series (from 2003 onwards) have Smart Card Readers and this machine is no exception...
True, not everybody needs this but for those of us who do, this is important, since almost no other company puts SmartCard Readers on their laptops. True, Lenovo does, but on 15"+ machines (I think HP also on some models).
I do not use the Smart Card for login, but for banking.
Currently, I use 4 personal & business bank accounts with 3 different banks and - surprise! All of them use SmartCard based security certificates for access. Only one of those banks allows the certificate to be exported to the computer, but only for personal accounts, not for business accounts.
I've been using an external Smart Card reader for the last year and it's a pain compared to an embedded reader...
When Dell adds at least 1440x900 resolution on their 12-13" models I'll consider buying one again...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
