Hacker News Reader

Comment by perth | Hacker News Reader

Pro Tip: get Dells business models like the latitude series

The business Dell laptops blow anything lenovo has ever made out of the water in terms of specs, build quality, and serviceability. Also Dell’s bios is way better and easier to do stuff in. I’ve had a t420 and I thought it was crap compared to the Dell business laptops. The cooling, plastic casing material, and serviceability just isn’t there. On the T420 my palm rest cracked and to replace it you pretty much had to fully take apart the laptop to get it off. ifixit rated that particular repair at a pretty high difficulty, so instead I took the reusable components out, binned it, and used a Dell latitude.

Currently I don't own a Dell business laptop however. Right now I'm using an Intel NUC Laptop and it does pretty good.

View on HN

The tip on purchasing business grade laptops applicable to several companies as well. I have the P series and it's going strong for 5 years after all the abuse of grad school and internships and now another degree. Apart from the wear on the rubber coating on the lid, the plastic is still robust. If you want upgradability from Lenovo, I think P series tick most boxes. The form factor is different here.

This has been the move for me.

I have a Carbon X1 running Windows through work and Latitude running Linux at home. It's not fair to compare the two because they are different weight classes and running different OSes, but the X1 battery life and performance have really put me off the smaller form factor. It's puny and it regularly gets ~2 hours off a charge versus 4-8x that on the Dell, all just to save a kilo.

I've used several Dell business laptops, most from the Latitude Exxx series, and they are great machines.

From what I can tell, they were made to compete directly with the IBM/Lenovo T-series Thinkpads. Similar form factor, ability to use docking stations, good keyboards, even the Trackpoint-like pointing device in addition to a traditional trackpad.

Although I haven't used a recent Lenovo T-series for any length of time, the Dells appear to compare very favorably. More metal construction, so they dent rather than cracking. Docking stations seem to be less expensive. Displays are on par. Similar battery life.

I wouldn't turn down a T-series if somebody handed me one, but many of the points the author makes in TFA about his T-series are true of the E-series Dells also.

I haven’t worked with anything newer, but the late 2000s Dell Precision laptops are a true pleasure to work on — a great deal more pleasant than any Thinkpad I’ve cracked open. With just four screws I’m inside of my old M4400 and can pop off its heat sink, change thermal paste, swap CPUs, change wifi/Bluetooth/cell cards, etc.

Overall, I prefer my old thinkpad to my old latitude. Typing on it right now. A proper keyboard.

Yep - Latitudes are always cheaper than their Thinkpad equivalents (example, my e6220 was about 2/3rds the cost of an x220 (this was about 5 years ago).

Where did you buy that NUC laptop from?

They are still a level much lower than Lenovo.

Agreed. Their BIOS is full of bugs. I've investigated a few on the 7275 (business grade): I believe it's technically impossible for it to really sleep on Windows, regardless of how you look at it. It just saves a little bit of power while it looks like it's sleeping, then Windows realize it's an unacceptable power draw and pulls the plug (power off) then transparently resumes from a S4 hibernate to disk.

Check my previous post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29762909

Reply on news.ycombinator.com