For corporate clients looking for high-end machines, the search should end with Dell's Latitude line of laptops. It has the right balance of features and performance. The foray of Dell into the market segment of corporate clients is never better exemplified than in its thin-and-light Latitude D600 series, based on the new Pentium M processor.



Pentium M processors and Intel's new 855 chipset are the latest components that embellish the Latitude series. Docking stations, port replicators, and media modules have been reworked; Dell appears to have redesigned all of its popular Latitude laptops,

A 14.1 inch screen is available on some Latitude notebooks with 1024 x 768 or 1400 x 1050 pixel resolutions. Notebooks also come with a small 14", 1400x1050 resolution.

The dimension of Latitude D600 is 1.2 x 12.4 x 10.1 inches and it weighs approximately 5.3 pounds, and 6.1 pounds with the AC adapter. The specs of D600 are 1.6-GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB DDR SDRAM upgradeable to 2GB, 40GB hard drive 5400 RPM, video ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphic processor, and DVD/CD-RW optical drive etc. The standard Operating System provided is Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition and the mobile technology used is Intel Centrino.

The latitude series come with preinstalled software like windows operating system, antivirus software, spyware software, acrobat reader, zip compression software, office software word, excel, powerpoint and PDF, parental control software, windows firewall, internet explorer 7.0 and windows recovery DVD disk.

The network card offered by D600 is integrated 10/ 100/ 1000 Network Card and integrated Wireless LAN, while the Data Link Protocols featured are Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and IEEE 802.11b.

The expandability feature includes Type I/ II PC Card Slot, Docking Station/ Port Replicator and the expansion ports are 2 x USB 2.0, VGA out, Parallel Port, Serial Port, RJ-11 (modem), RJ-45 (NIC), and S-Video out. Latitude D600 really has great security features like HDD Password, slot for Cable Lock, Setup Password, and Administer Password.

The D600 notebook includes both a middle-of-the-keyboard pointing stick and a touchpad. The mouse has four buttons i.e., two below the spacebar and two below the touchpad. Dell D600 offers a modular bay battery for longer life and using ExpressCharge technology, a dead battery gets back to 80 percent charge in an hour.

Dell Latitude Notebooks come with a Three-year Limited warranty supplemented with three years of Next Business Day On-Site parts replacement and three years of On-Site Labor Service.

If a defective part is one that is easily disconnected and reconnected (that is, a customer replacement unit (CRU), Dell reserves the right to send buyers a replacement for the part. Examples of CRUs are memory, CD-ROMs, docking stations, PC cards, battery, adapter, mice, keyboards, internal drives, and external drives.

Extensive 7x24 E-Support Dell offers an extensive range of free online assistance at the website, support.dell.com. Your queries are answered using online self-diagnostics tools and a vast repository of information resources.

Overall, the Dell Latitude Laptop is a good buy for Corporates.