Does anyone have a Dell Latitude E6500? I wanted to get some feedback on its physical sturdiness. My department is in the market for some new laptops and our company's purchasing department is pushing Dell. I've had previous experience with Dell laptops and found their cases and chassis to be liable to fail. But the new E-series claims to be sturdier. We've had good experience with IBM ThinkPads, but I don't know that Lenovo is going to keep that tradition up.

Dunno about the E6500 -- brand new, but looks great.

I'm drooling over the E4300 (not yet available), which appears to share similar (new) construction.

I have zero complaints about our Dell notebooks here, and the lone Latitude X1 we have is all-metal and has survived many airports and countries just fine. The E4300 looks like a worthy successor to it, at exactly 1.0Kg (lighter than an EeePC).

Cheers

Just got a new D830 Latitude at work.
It's not flimsy or tweaky at all. Dunno if that extends across their line, though.
My old (5yo) D840 was easier to twist than the new one is.

For the record, I got in a few E6500s and their build quality is excellent. We also recently got in some Lenovo Thinkpad T61s and I'd say that the Dells have significantly less body flex, not that the Lenovos are flimsy.

The latch mechanism on the Lenovo is better: less awkward to operate, dual catches. Also, I prefer the way the Lenovo's lid/screen wraps around the body a little bit when closed. The Dell just sandwiches together. Also, the Lenovo has squarer, flatter sides. The nose of the Dell has seven different angles, which means that it's always going to have its weight on an edge when you have it sitting vertically in a bag. And it seems like it's going to be far easier to ding one of those edges.

The Dell website seems to have lied about the weight of the laptop. It claims 5.2lbs. Mine weighs 5.6lbs. with no battery. With the battery (9-cell), it weighs 6.7 lbs. I was definitely hoping for a lighter weight. The Lenovo actually weighs less, despite the fact that the specs say it should weigh more. So I'm disappointed about that.

The laptops both have all of these ports: USB, VGA, PCCard, ExpressCard, Ethernet, 4-pin FireWire, headphone, microphone. The Lenovo has the following ports in addition: multi-format flash card reader, modem. The Dell has these in addition: SD card reader, smartcard reader, DisplayPort, eSATA. Also, the Lenovo has the PCCard and ExpressCard ports contiguous, probably so you can use an old Type-III PCMCIA card. The Lenovo has 3 USB ports, while the Dell has four, one of which is also the eSATA port.

The docking stations have their own pluses and minuses. The big plus for the Dell is dual DVI ports. The big plus for the Lenovo is better construction and more soft-buttons, by which I mean buttons that send signals to eject, rather than just doing a hard eject of the laptop. I've yet to comparison test the docking stations more in depth.

Honestly, I'm not super-happy with either of them. They're both too big, but they're the smallest I can find that meet my requirement of having a screen equal to or greater than 1400x1050 in both dimensions. I have other requirements, too, but that was the most restrictive one.

My T61 only goes up to 1280x800 so is the higher res an option or am I doing something wrong ?

As I recall, it's a purchase-time option.

Display Panel

• 15.4 WXGA TFT
• 15.4 WSXGA+ TFT [add $75.00 $50.25] [Lenovo recommended]

Ahh so Ricoh cheaped out They didn't get bluetooth either.