Dell Latitude E6420 14" Notebook - Intel Core I5 I5-2520M 2.50 Ghz

Pretty great laptop. Had no issue whatsoever with the screen like another reviewer said, worked great since day 1 for half a year now. Also installed linux ubuntu 11.10 on it, works like a charm the multitouch on the touchpad in ubuntu also runs great (there's a debian package for that). It's strong, powerful, and despite its tank-like build it's not as heavy as you'd expect. A friend has an older model of the series and 5 years later and a cup of coffee on the keyboard and it still works great.

I'm working on a degree in Computer Science and needed a laptop with good processing capability. After doing some research on the processors out there (I wanted at least an Intel I5), this laptop looked like a good choice for my price-point criteria. It does have good number crunching capabilities, but when I set up a mysql database on it and ran a database intensive program it maxed out the disk drive access (this is easy to monitor in Ubuntu). When I checked the programs running the database queries, I found they were using only small percentage of available CPU power. In other words, this laptop seems to have some IO limitations that keep it from making full use of the CPU (in some applications).

Outside of the IO bottleneck the laptop does fine. The bezel is a bit wide, making the effective screen space smaller, but the screen resolution is decent. As long as my eyes can make out the smaller fonts it is workable. The built in webcam and microphone work well. I tried training the speech recognition software in Windows 7 using the built in mics and it did OK. Perhaps I can use that later to dictate my dissertation...

All in all, I am fairly pleased with the laptop. I spent some time optimizing the database to see if that will help relieving the disk access limitations. We'll see how that works.

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Thia is a solid business machine for the money.

Pros:

3 Year Warranty

Built like a tank

I like the rubbery feel of the armrest.

Nice High Resolution screen.

Fast

Long battery life especially with the 9 cell battery

DELL stands behind their products (might take some time on hold but they have been excellent repsonding to my needs in the past)

Cons:

Touchpad needs to be adjusted in the software for best use it has many options and I recommend unchecking inertial scrolling.

Slightly heavier 1/2 pound? than similar 14 inch laptops I overlook this due to it's obviously better build quality.

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I've used this laptop for work, 8+ hrs a day, for the last 18 months, and the thing is a rock. Very stable, fast boot, overall very very happy my employer chose this model. I have had a number of laptops over the last 10 years, inlcuding Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell, Samsung. This is by far the best, even 2 years after it's release. Running Windows 7 Pro 32-bit.

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Been using this laptop for over a year now, and it has been rock solid. Great battery life and no hard drive issues. It runs applications quickly whether in Ubuntu 12.x, Windows 7, or even Windows 8. All have run great and without problems. I appreciate the simplicity of the system since it is primarily for business Office applications, browsing, and email. But there is still plenty of power to work in Photoshop, Lightroom, or other photo/video editing software. Gaming is limited by the built-in graphics card, but I'm sure you could find a few goodies to play on it. The primary downside of the system is the screen resolution 1366x768. So be sure to get the HD+ which permits 1600x900.

It also runs a bit hot, but remains silent even when the fans are working hard.

Overall, an aging, but still solid, choice for your business needs and/or limited media work.