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Dell Latitude D420Dell’s durable ultraportable offers excellent battery life and mobile broadband, making it a very good companion for road warriors. Price:
$2,271
By Jamie Bsales 
Executives and IT managers will find a lot to like about the Dell Latitude D420. Road warriors and frequent flyers will appreciate its light yet durable design and all-day battery life, while IT departments will be pleased to see that the D420 comes with Dell’s full suite of management utilities and is Microsoft Vista Capable.
The D420 has the footprint of a sheet of paper and is just an inch thick. Weighing only three pounds (or 3.6 pounds with the nine-cell battery our system came with), the unit feels light but solid. The metallic dark-silver chassis, like other Latitude D models, is conservative (almost plain) and inoffensive. But you’re not buying the D420 for its looks; you’re buying it for the features, and on that front, this ultraportable delivers. One of our favorite features for business travelers is the Wi-Fi Catcher, which, even with the system off, shows a green LED when you are within range of a Wi-Fi network. You can set it to show green only if the network is available (that is, unsecured), so you don’t boot up only to find you’re locked out anyway. Road warriors will also appreciate the optional wireless broadband connectivity (your choice of Cingular HSDPA or Verizon EV-DO) in addition to the standard 802.11a/g Wi-Fi. Flip the lid and you’ll find the D420’s sharp, bright 12.1-inch widescreen. The matte finish is more forgiving under office lighting than glare-prone glossy screens are, and viewing angles were good side to side, though the screen looked washed out when viewed from above. The 1280 x 800-pixel resolution makes for some tiny type on Web sites and in apps, so be prepared to use large fonts and zoom in when possible. The D420’s keyboard is slightly smaller than full size but still very usable. The keys are comfortable and quiet, and we appreciate the inclusion of both a touchpad and a pointing stick (each with its own set of mouse buttons). We’re not fans of the small touchpad buttons, though; they’re tiny because of the biometric fingerprint reader sandwiched between them. Given the D420’s compact dimensions, we’re impressed with its port selection: four USB, VGA, FireWire, SD and PC Card slots, headphone and mic jacks, LAN, and modem. On the bottom of the unit is the docking port for the Media Base (a $279 option). It adds half an inch to the D420’s profile and brings the total system weight to just less than five pounds. The extra heft nets you an 8X DVD burner, serial and parallel ports, and a DVI output. The security and durability features of the D420 are top-notch. In addition to the fingerprint reader, there’s a TPM 1.2 security chip, a standard Smart Card reader, and the preloaded Wave Embassy Trust Suite. This suite lets you encrypt files and folders on a protected virtual drive, add hardware security (fingerprint or password) to e-mail and wireless logins, and more. As for durability, the D420 has a sturdy magnesium alloy chassis, and the 60GB hard drive is shock-mounted (though we‘d like to see an active hard drive protection system). The 1.2-GHz Intel Core Duo Processor ULV U2500 delivered average performance for this class of machine (176 on MobileMark 2005), and 3D graphics performance was adequate (1,022 on 3DMark03). Battery life, however, was stellar: 7 hours and 40 minutes with the nine-cell battery. We were especially impressed with the D420’s EV-DO performance. Riding on Verizon Wireless’ BroadbandAccess network, this system delivered an average data rate of 703 Kbps, at the top end of the carrier’s 400-to-700 Kbps claims. Aside from Dell’s management utilities and the security suite, preinstalled software is limited to DVD creation and playback software. But the warranty is solid: three years on parts and labor with onsite service and lifetime toll-free tech support. Don’t be put off by the $2,271 price, as that total includes the Media Base, extended battery, and built-in EV-DO card. You can get the D420 for as little as $1,774—an attractive price for such a compact, full-featured workhorse. Compare Prices | Dell Latitude D420 Specifications
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