back to article Dell Latitude E6220 12.5in Core i7 notebook

Dell's Latitude E6220 is a typical workhorse, designed to be solid, dependable and ever so slightly boring. However, Dell is aiming this compact model more at small businesses rather than large organisations. And the increasing numbers of people who, like myself, are self-employed. A touch of style and being just 1in thin and …

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  1. fLaMePrOoF
    WTF?

    Intel integrated graphics and only 128 MB SSD for £1370?!!!

    It may be a decent all round system but it's GROSSLY overpriced and just for that not worthy of an 80% score!

    1. Si 1

      Tell me about it. What's the point of all that i7 horse power if you're going to shackle it to Intel's pathetic graphics chip. Given the thickness of the casing they should have had plenty of room to squeeze a dedicated graphics card from nVidia or AMD in there (Dell's Alienware brand has an 11" system with an i7 and a decent dedicated graphics chip).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Business" class

        The business class Dells, Lenovos, and HPs are always pricey... my Elitebook (i5, integrated graphics) probably cost my company $1,500. IMHE, I have found them to be more reliable than their consumer grade kin, but at the same time I wouldn't be using one of these if work didn't foot the bill.

        We need all that processing power to chew through all the craptastic management software they sling at us with our corporate builds. My i5 with the company image runs like an i3 with a clean install - with luck a machine like this might get me into i5 territory : )

  2. GettinSadda
    FAIL

    Spot the FAIL!

    "Suggested Price: £1370"

    "The display resolution is 1366 x 768"

    1. Jan 0 Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Spot the FAIL!

      and there's no thunderbolt port!

    2. zanto

      Re: Spot the FAIL!

      You beat me to it. Although the form factor is small, I personally do not equate that resolution to a "business" laptop. The T60 with it's 1400x1050 would be the lowest I consider to be a decent resolution on a laptop I use for work.

      However, to be fair, I work in engineering, a friend who's a CA is quite happy with his netbook when he needs to travel to a clients office. He also has another system in his office hooked to a 22inch display for his main work.

      Being a Latitude, I'm assuming this would support a docking station and it's graphics chip can support an external display with a resolution of at least 1600x900? If not then the price is not justified.

  3. toffer99

    HOW MUCH?? Are you nuts, Dell. Prices should be dropping, not climbing.

    1. Silverburn

      Well, there'd be 2 reasons to increase the prices:

      - they're a bit skint these days, so extra margin might be useful. And this "niche" unit might do to the trick, as it's easier to markup.

      - They see people like samsung whacking up the prices of tables and premium books to equal or greater than Apple, and getting away with it. Why not try it themselves?

      Caveat: I actually quite look the look of this, even though it is a Dell. An i7 in a small form factor. If only it had DX11 and a smaller 11' screen, it would be right up there come the summer and my laptop gets replaced.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    thats the list price

    we have a few of these and they are pretty good. As a DELL premier pages customer we pay about £1100 for pretty much maxed out spec 6220 list price would be £1500+

    1. sabba
      Thumb Down

      Re: thats the list price

      Think I would rather go with a MacBook Air at that price.

  5. Matthew Anderson

    Suggested Price: £1370

    Like the top 3 comments, I baulked at this. This is not aimed at small businesses at all, small businesses use £450 laptops. This is aimed at people with wads of cash.

    1. Van
      Thumb Down

      So you're assuming 1. Small business can't make a lot of money and 2. They don't need a capable performer, that is solid and dependable ?

      £1,149.00 with VAT claimed back.

  6. Jamie Kitson

    Thinkpad X220

    For the same price you could get a very well spec'ed X220, which is surely better for the type of person this laptop is aimed at.

  7. Paul Bruneau

    I like it but...

    I can't make myself pay the "Dell Premium"

    I'll have to stick with my boring old MacBook Air

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I like it but...

      So you went with the "Apple Premium" instead, huh?

  8. Lyndon Hills 1

    Better Value?

    It seems to me that this http://www.reghardware.com/2012/02/06/review_samsung_series_7_chonos/page2.html reviewed a couple of weeks ago, is a better buy. I do appreciate that the market isn't exactly the same, but it's a lot cheaper.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Better Value?

      Don’t forget that with the DELL you'll have at least 3yr NBD onsite support so if it breaks a little man comes out and fixes it next day. One of our users insisted on getting some little Toshiba thingy (really a home laptop rather than corporate) because it was small and flash, etc went wrong and he was without a laptop for 2 weeks whilst it was repaired. Anther users a few years ago insisted on getting a Sony Vile (sorry Vaio) for the same reasons, anyway packed in 1 month outside its 1yr warranty and Sony weren’t interested and quoted him something stupid to get it fixed.

      1. Hilibnist
        Holmes

        Re: Re: Better Value?

        Really? Obviously you pay Dell and Toshiba more for next day onsite service than their return to base service, but I never met a Toshiba notebook which couldn't be paired with a NBD onsite warranty. Toshiba's Up and Running warranty is even better... It's not foolproof, but you don't have to wait for an engineer, they'll just attend and stick your hard drive in a replacement chassis.

        Of course, you can't help users who want to save money by choosing a cheaper service contract which doesn't offer the support they need!

  9. Fuzz

    Aimed at business

    If it's aimed at business, why does it have a 16:9 screen?

    1. Darryl
      Thumb Up

      @Fuzz

      Sorry, could only upvote your question once. I hate widescreen monitors on laptops, desktops, servers... They're OK on TVs

  10. Johnny Canuck

    I hope you took suitable precautions to keep the vents clear while using the machine in bed.

  11. druck Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    At least...

    ...it has FULL SIZED cursor keys!

    Rather than the stupid half height ones blighting must other laptops just so the keyboard outline looks pretty.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yep, as others have said, way overpriced given it's marginal speed increase over the ultrabooks.

    For that price I'd expect at least double the RAM, at least a 1600x1080 screen, preferably a 1920x1200 and a discrete GPU.

  13. Andy 70
    Happy

    these are nice machines

    however, i have the advantage of not having paid for them.

    the missus's i5 based one has more than enough poke, and docker carries dual DVI and display ports, plus the usual usb, ps/2, gig lan, so screw blunderbolt lameness.

    anyway, the otherhalf loves it. small, discreet, and massive battery life with the extended battery.

    my place dishes out the 14" screen i5 varient of these.

    quite impressed with how snappy these little things are. started to become desktop replacements with the dockers for some departments.

  14. Steve Evans

    "when it comes to rolling up your sleeves and updating various websites, using content management systems and working on long documents, you need a proper keyboard"

    And more than a 768 pixel high screen!

    Sounds like a bit of a premium netbook to me. You could treat yourself to a Sony SE series lappy with a full HD screen and an i7 for less £££...

  15. rho
    Trollface

    Dell/Sony/Toshiba/Apple/Russian/American

    ...all made in Taiwan!

  16. Talic

    low screen resolution

    I dont think that the low resolution is an issue at all.

    To those who would like it alot higher, could you stare at 1920x1080 over a 12.5" area?

    everything would be so small and just cause frustration

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: low screen resolution

      Well.... yes. My phone has a 3.5 inch screen and has a much higher pixel count per inch than this.

      The new ipads (10 inch) are rumoured to have much higher resolution than this. So yes - resolution is important. The resolutions that new laptops seem to be pushing these days is a joke - and people seem to be buying them on the basis that its High Definition.

      High Definition my arse!

      On the general spec of this machine - yes it is badly configured. Paying that much for something that is no more real use than a £400 netbook with NBD support.

      The only reason to buy a similarly priced/speced machine is:

      1. Money to burn

      2. Getting a cut of the purchase price

      3. Your stupid.

      You can get a much better laptop of a similar size from Dell themselves.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: low screen resolution

      @Talic "To those who would like it alot higher, could you stare at 1920x1080 over a 12.5" area?

      everything would be so small and just cause frustration"

      - You can increase the size of the fonts if you have poor eyesight, or don't need to process a lot of information visually.

      Even for web browsing - i find a low resolution very frustrating.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One thing this laptop has that those others mentioned don't.... a docking port. Invaluable if you work regularly in the office and at home.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you're buying Latitudes, phone up and the salespeople have lots of scope to discount them.

    Buying a cheap Vostro laptop, you browse the dell website and throw in the 50-75 quid off coupon code.

    It isn't a netbook. It has an i7, a decent matt screen and 3 year NBD onsite warranty. Also the unadvertised advantage that after 3-4 years because corporates retire their machines, there's tonnes of cheap second ones on ebay, should you want to swap parts.

    If you want gaming, you don't buy one of these.

    I suppose the best reason not to buy one is the ivy bridge upgrade that the non-corporate (XPS etc) laptops will be getting in April.

  19. dajames
    FAIL

    Wrong spec ... as per usual

    Take the expensive SSD out and put in a sensible 500GB+ HDD. Replace the screen with, say, a 1680x1050 panel (which is about enough for 12") and I'd buy one if it were less than a £k.

  20. Van

    VAT

    So it's aimed at businesses, who've obviously made the decision to go with windows. That's £1,149.00 then, for a pretty capable business machine.

    Why there are comments about gaming, Apple macs and having to have money to burn I don't know.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: VAT

      I think that this is because £1149 is a lot of money for a laptop of this spec- and as many people have pointed out - it is not that capable.

      It is only of real use for simple office applications, web browsing and playing low resolution videos. It has insufficient resolution for many business practices that require a lot of desktop real-estate and the graphics processor is not sufficient to drive a higher resolution monitor.

      Its only strength appears to be number crunching since it has a good spec processor. Most number crunching applications in a business environment that I know of use workstations or servers or high end laptops with high resolution screens and capable graphic capabilities - this laptop does not match any of these categories. So I concur with many of the comments on this forum; It is, mostly, overpriced for something that can run MS Word - in a limited way.

      For those that remember the Hitch-Hikers guide - this mini - "Deep Thought" computer could run for many years crunching numbers to come up with the number "42" but that would be about the extent of it.

  21. Ron1
    Meh

    You forgot to mention SmartCard Reader

    You mentioned all other ports & options, but not the Smart Card Reader.

    AFAIK ALL Dell Latitude machines since at least the D series (from 2003 onwards) have Smart Card Readers and this machine is no exception...

    True, not everybody needs this but for those of us who do, this is important, since almost no other company puts SmartCard Readers on their laptops. True, Lenovo does, but on 15"+ machines (I think HP also on some models).

    I do not use the Smart Card for login, but for banking.

    Currently, I use 4 personal & business bank accounts with 3 different banks and - surprise! All of them use SmartCard based security certificates for access. Only one of those banks allows the certificate to be exported to the computer, but only for personal accounts, not for business accounts.

    I've been using an external Smart Card reader for the last year and it's a pain compared to an embedded reader...

    When Dell adds at least 1440x900 resolution on their 12-13" models I'll consider buying one again...

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