February 11th, 2008Review of Dell ATG D620
As the fame of laptops has full-grown over the years, it has also lead to an add to in accidental breakage and injure. Users spill coffee and water on their laptops, drop them off their tables; bump the laptop bags into walls that leads to a radically shortened life. Apart from these obvious scenarios, one has to think other factors too. Most laptops are made from plastic, which over time is prone to wear and tear. It is common place to discover all kind of scratches, dents and other dies-figurations on laptops over a year old.
Performance all this in mind, Panasonic has introduced a new variety simply called tough or rocky laptops. The laptops are made from tough equipment such as reinforced steel, magnesium alloy and in some great cases even titanium. These laptops maybe tough but suffer from some crucial problems. Due to the nature of their strengthening these laptops weigh a lot, suffer from outdated system specifications and are near impossible to improve. If that was not bad enough, these laptops also cost a lot and this puts them out of stroke of most average consumers.
Recognize the possible of the tough laptop market; quite a few manufacturers have in progress scaling down their tough notebooks in favor of making them accessible to a broader set of customers. These new laptops are referred to as semi-rugged notebooks, sport hard-bitten exteriors but not to the degree as tough laptops and come with a choice of the best processors and hardware.
One such laptop we are reviewing is the Dell ATG (All Terrain Grade) D620, a semi-rugged version of Dell”s previous best seller the Dell Latitude 620. It is Dell”s first effort at a tough laptop and does it deliver on it’s assure of being able to stay alive a hard bump.
Design
The ATG D620 at first fleeting look caught us off-guard. It looks pretty much like an armored vehicle. Dell has used a magnesium-alloy body which can survive a fair quantity of shock. The external of the laptop is coated with a thick durable “gritty” paint, which comes in a two-tone silver/black shade and gives the laptop a textured finish. This paint also serves another reason. Due to its “grittiness” it does not scratch that easily.
The pivot and LCD panel area of the laptop is another area that Dell has beefed up. As contrast to the standard set of hinges that are found on the Inspiron and Latitude range, the hinges on the D620 have been unbreakable to take more wear and tear. Similarly, the LCD itself has been unbreakable with a tough sheet of beaker that like the body can endure a lot of stress and in case of an accident will ensure that the LCD panel keeps working. The keyboard of the D620 has been designed to be spill-proof. This is achieved by means of a tray, which is present directly under the keyboard area. In case of a spill, it will prevent the liquid from graceful into the responsive mechanism present just underneath.
This is another great point as we feel spill-proof designs, such as this should be incorporated into standard laptops too. In a standard laptop, a 2.5 inch drive is used and has just a shock proof enclosure. Dell has taken it a step further. Not only has Dell included the standard 2.5 shock-proof enclosure, it has toughened it up further by putting in an extra layer of the magnesium alloy that has been used on the exterior of the body. However this has forced Dell into using a slower and smaller 1.8 inch laptop drive, in its place of the standard 2.5 inch affair simply due to the truth that the extra “padding” takes up that much space.
Finally the back area of the laptop, which houses all the message and connectivity ports too, has been worked upon. For protecting them, Dell has with this them inside a thick black artificial cover.
Features
The D620 sports a fast and powerful Core2Duo 7200 processor, has 80 GB of HDD space on a 1.8 inch 4200 RPM drive, 2 GB of system memory and a decent 14.1 widescreen LCD panel with a native resolution of 1280 x 800. The LCD panel has higher than standard screen brightness of 500 nits. The result is that the screen can get very bright, awkwardly so at times. In terms of graphics, the laptop suffers with its Intel GMA950 chip. Dell has really dropped the ball here. An Nvidia GeForce 7400 Go key, would have been more preferable.
For peripheral connectivity and expandability, the D620, has 4 USB slots, 1 Ethernet Slot, one Express card slot, VGA, headphone/speaker out, integrated microphone and infra-red ports apart from the average 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth options. While far from being a comprehensive list, this is not a bad deal, with the only inquisitive omission being Firewire.
As we have mentioned before, the keyboard of the D620 has been designed to be spill-proof. This has resulted in the laptop having slightly elevated keys. This factor works out well in Dell”s favor, as the raised keys makes typing a lot easier and reduces user fatigue. Another surprising move that Dell has made, future for the D620 is the fact they have included both a touchpad and an IBM-style track- point. Both the track-point and touchpad are very at ease to use and posed no problems.
Performance
To check out the performance of the Dell ATG D620, we divided our tests into two parts. In our first part, we checked out its system presentation, of the laptop using Future mark products such as PCMark and 3Dmark. Due to the poor nature of the graphics subsystem, both the standard programs were unable to complete their full cycles. So what we did in its place was to center on the relative strength of the CPU and the fast smash into to achieve this, we simply used the tests, in the benchmark programs that have been specially written to force these parts. Here the laptop easily kept up with other machines such as the Asus VX1, which comes with a similar pattern. The test scores we established were fairly comparable.
The Dell ATG D620 is specified for military circumstances and has been intended towards achieving that claim. Therefore for our second test, we did a simple drop test from a height of about 2 ½ feet onto a thickly carpeted area. The results were surprising. The screen bezel and LCD protective glass cracked. However regardless of this delay, the laptop kept on working fine. There was no damage whatsoever to any of the internal mechanism.
The ATG D620 overall is a mixed bag. While it is a tough laptop having survived a drop that would have probably shattered other laptops, it is prohibitively priced at Rs. 2, 00,000. On top of that it offers less HDD space because compared to other laptops and has no 3D chipset obtainable as an option. Despite its drawbacks, we advise this product carefully. It is a perfect laptop for architects and outdoor inspector.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
This laptop is a piece of crap! I shipped it back and instructed my credit card company that I returned it and not to give them not one red cent. I bet that cramming my fingers down my throad and upchucking all over the key board would help. I was in such a rush to return this piece of junk that I almost tripped over myself running out the door to ship it back UPS. I would rather pour gasoline on my head, light it on fire and beat it out with a 10 lb sledge hammer than buy this lap top.
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
HD of my Dell ATG 620 already crashed, Physically defective MBR, last months the internal fan made strange noises, they have to dissassemble the whole notebook to replace the defective fan – all in all overpriced crap, not tough at all – not even all terrain grade, …
April 14th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
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