Editors' Rating
| Service & support |  |
6.0 |
| Design |  |
7.0 |
| Features |  |
8.0 |
| Battery life |  |
9.0 |
| Performance | |
8.0 |
Published: 05 Feb 2007
Although broken, damaged, or otherwise banged-up systems are the bane of every notebook owner, rugged and semi-rugged systems (companies apply the terms loosely according to their own standards) are often hampered by limited configuration options and outdated parts. Dell hopes to energise the rugged notebook market with its first such model, the Latitude ATG D620. Rather than designing a new system from the ground up, the £1,055 (ex. VAT) Dell ATG is a beefed-up version of the popular Latitude D620, adding a new outer case, a shock-mounted hard drive and other heavy-duty extras, which tack about £500 onto the price of a regular Latitude D620. Although it doesn't look or feel as tough as a system like the Itronix GoBook XR-1, it is one of the more configurable rugged systems you'll find. Dell's wide-ranging customisation options make the Latitude ATG D620 an attractive system; even if it's not the toughest notebook around, it can certainly survive a really rough day at the office.
The ATG in the system's name stands for All-Terrain Grade, a bit of playful promotional copywriting that brings to mind 4x4 ads showing attractive young adults off-roading though the mud. The system looks like an armour-clad version of a standard grey notebook from Dell's Latitude line, with parts of the lid padded out like a car bumper. The chassis is still made of a magnesium alloy, but the new hinges are reinforced with steel.
Measuring 33.7cm wide, 23.8cm deep and 4.38cm high, the Latitude ATG D620 is slightly larger than a standard Latitude D620, but it still comes in under the 3kg mark (2.83kg) when configured with a 14.1in. screen, a CD-ROM drive and a 6-cell battery. Anything above 3kg is a backbreaker for daily commuting, but for use on a construction site or in a work vehicle, the added heft is a reasonable trade-off. The rugged Itronix GoBook XR-1 weighs 3.6kg, despite having only a 12.1in. screen.
The screen bezel, keyboard tray, and keyboard are black with silver accents, lending the machine an industrial look. The touchpad has two sets of mouse buttons (one above and one below), along with a more traditional ThinkPad-style pointing stick embedded in the keyboard, so you should be able to find an input style you're comfortable with. The keyboard tray itself is sealed, offering resistance to dust and minor spills. We tested the system with a few small water dribbles, and it easily survived our attentions. As far as military specs for truly rugged notebooks are concerned (MIL SPEC 810F), it meets the requirements in certain categories, including vibration, humidity and altitude.
The lid includes two small red task lights positioned above the screen, which illuminate the keyboard when operating in low-light situations. When mounted in a vehicle at night — one of Dell's suggested uses for the Latitude ATG D620 — the red light is much less distracting to the driver than your typical white or blue keyboard light. An ambient light sensor can also automatically adjust the screen brightness to provide good readability in different environments. Both features can be turned off if you want to preserve battery life or you simply find them annoying.
The 14.1in. screen has a native resolution of 1,280 by 800, the same as that of a non-rugged Latitude, and is designed to perform well in outdoor daylight situations — a weak point for many notebooks. The brightness maxes out at 500 nits (a common measure of luminance), whereas most other notebooks deliver between 200 and 300 nits. We found the screen bright and easy to see, and its maximum setting was uncomfortably bright in a typical indoor environment. In direct sunlight, the screen was much less washed out than those of standard notebooks.
To keep your data safe, the ATG D620 ditches the more common 2.5in. hard drive for a smaller 1.8in. drive, which is then stuffed into a custom, shock-mounted 2.5in. hard drive bay. You lose some speed and capacity, but hard drives and their spinning platters are notoriously fragile. If you're in a situation that calls for a rugged notebook, you'll want the extra data protection — even at the expense of a few revs per minute. The rear ports — two USB 2.0, Ethernet, modem, VGA, and serial — are protected with a plastic cover, but the side ports (headphone, mic, PC card and two more USB 2.0 jacks) are left exposed. We would have preferred to see all the connections covered (as on the Itronix GoBook XR-1): after all, a little sand in a USB port can ruin your entire day.
Configuration options are identical to the non-rugged version of the Dell Latitude D620, so much so that Dell says IT departments can roll out their standard Latitude D620 images on the new hardware. Our review unit included a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, an 80GB hard drive running at 4,200rpm and integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics. You can knock the price down by about £100 by moving down to a 1.6GHz T5500 CPU and 512MB of RAM. The most recent rugged notebook we looked at, the Itronix GoBook XR-1, had a less powerful CPU — a Core Duo T2400.
For an operating system, you can choose between Windows XP Professional (installed on our review system and several flovours of Windows Vista. Systems aimed at business users, such as the Latitude range, will continue to be available with XP through 2008.
Thanks to its mainstream parts, the Latitude ATG D620 doesn't sacrifice performance when compared to non-rugged systems fitted with similar components. In our Multitasking test, the ATG was evenly matched with two other systems with Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 CPUs and 1GB of RAM — the Gateway NX570X and the Toshiba Satellite P105. In the Photoshop CS2 test, which is hard-drive-intensive, the Latitude ATG D620 fell behind the Gateway, which has a faster hard drive but not by a huge margin. The integrated Intel 950 graphics won't be much help playing the latest 3D games, but we wouldn't expect a dedicated video chip for an in-the-field rugged notebook.
Our Latitude ATG D620 included a nine-cell battery that sticks out somewhat from the system's front. A six-cell battery that more closely follows the chassis's silhouette is also available. Using the larger battery, we got an impressive 3 hours and 55 minutes from our DVD battery drain test, which is about as much as you can expect from any system without a second battery. That's nearly identical to the score of the last non-rugged Latitude D620 we looked at, although it's worth noting that the latter score came from a different battery test.
The default service plan is three years of next-business-day on-site service, with upgrade options available.
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