Dell Latitude D531

The Dell Latitude D531 isn't the fastest or sexiest laptop on the market, but it does deliver what business buyers crave most: configurability, long battery life, and good value. This six-pound mainstream portable is worth a look for corporations and growing businesses that appreciate a stable platform and common parts (battery, AC adapter, bay devices, and docking solutions for D531 are the same as for all the other D-series models) but are tired of paying north of $2,000 per machine for a decently equipped model.

 

Dell didn't cut corners when it came to the screen: The 15.4-inch TrueLife display is extra bright and delivers excellent viewing-angle range, even when viewed from above. The 1440 x 900-pixel resolution makes for crisp, legible text, though default font and icon sizes in documents and Web pages looked a touch small. During DVD playback the panel did exhibit some motion blur, and while scenes looked rich, they were a tad dark overall, losing some details in shadow areas.

 

The widely spaced speakers provided excellent sound quality and enough volume for presentations around a conference table. And we applaud the comfortable full-sized keyboard, which is one of the quietest we've heard. The system has no dedicated multimedia keys, however, and users will have to make do with a touchpad (other business machines have both the pad and a pointing stick). Port selection is fairly standard and includes four USB ports, FireWire, S-Video and VGA connectors, and even a serial port. On the right you'll find a modular bay that accepts an optical drive (a DVD+/-RW drive in our configuration), a removable 80GB hard drive, a six-cell battery pack, or (a blast from the past) a floppy disk drive.

 

As with other Latitudes, just about every component in the D531 is configurable. We like that you can forgo trial software that can drag down your system's performance, or opt for a more powerful CPU, more RAM, larger battery, and other goodies and wind up at $1,499, which is the build we tested. The D531 comes standard with Windows XP Pro; Windows Vista Business is a no-cost option.

 

As the value model in the Latitude D family, the D531 has plenty of features, but you make a few tradeoffs for the low price. It has a rigid magnesium-alloy chassis for the base as well as behind the LCD, but the shock-mounted hard drive does not have an active protection system. The D531 has the latest TPM chipset and the Wave Embassy Trust Suite for data encryption, password management, and so on, but there's no fingerprint reader or Smart Card option. And while the 802.11a/b/g/n wireless chipset has every flavor of Wi-Fi covered, integrated wireless broadband is not an option. That said, we're happy to see a good old-fashioned PC Card slot, so you can opt for a less-expensive add-in solution.

 

Performance from the 2-GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 processor (aided by 2GB of RAM in our test unit) is fine for business applications but certainly shows the D531's cost-saving intentions. It scored 215 on MobileMark 2005, which is on the low end of the spectrum for mainstream notebooks. That said, in hands-on use, applications opened and responded quickly, with no hint of sluggishness. The machine's graphics performance, too, was below average (1,695 on 3DMark03), although that's to be expected from ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 integrated graphics.

 

Runtime from the nine-cell battery was excellent for a 15-inch laptop, lasting nearly 6.5 hours. Wireless throughput (more than 22 Mbps at both 15 feet and 50 feet from our AP) was above average, though on our tests we did have trouble keeping a solid connection, especially at greater distances.

 

As with most portables destined for a corporate environment, preinstalled software is kept to a minimum. The Creator Plus suite (OEM edition) is on board to make use of the DVD burner, as is InterVideo's DVD player. You also get Dell's handy QuickSet utility, which provides one-button access to a power-management wizard, presentation-mode settings, and the Location Profiler Manager for setting various parameters (default Wi-Fi network and homepage, default printer, folder-sharing settings, and so on) based on the location you choose.

 

Dell backs the D531 with a one-year warranty and next--business day onsite service (three- and four-year plans are also available)--an attractive standard feature especially for smaller businesses that don't have pools of machines in their IT departments. That peace of mind, plus the fine screen and good battery life, make the Latitude D531 a top pick for businesses on a budget.  

 

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