The Technicist

The Dealicist: Dell Latitude E6400

Dell's outlet store is a fantastic place to buy computers, offering great pricing on refurbished and newly returned notebooks. Add in perpetual 20% off coupons (sometimes more), and you're talking nearly brand new computer for easily 40% off the new price. This gets better with the Business outlet, where you can find refurb Latitudes, which are at the moment my favorite business laptops (more stylish than ThinkPads, more solid than HP Compaqs, usually cheaper than both).

Particularly appetizing is the Dell E6400, the 14"/5lb mainstream staple in the Latitude lineup. In base configuration, it has a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, 1GB RAM (easily upgraded), a smallish 80GB hard drive, the Intel Montevina platform with the GM45 chipset and GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics, a 14" LED backlit WXGA screen (with a matte finish, too), great build quality (brushed aluminum lid!), very good keyboard, and a trackpoint mouse.

What can all this hotness be had for? I've seen base E6400 refurbs go as low as $569 on the Dell Outlet, which, with the current 20% off coupon, comes out to $455 plus tax (free shipping too, bless their souls). Depending on how much tax is in your state, thats right around $500 for a well built and well designed business laptop that will last you for quite a while. Whats the catch? Its refurbished, but with a computer this recent, that doesn't really mean much. From what I've seen and heard, Dell factory refurb units are famed for their quality and condition.

I'm in love. I would do this in a heartbeat if I was in for a 14" notebook, but really, a 5lb unit just isn't what I'm looking for right now. I want something lighter and smaller so that I can leave the Asus at home, and preferably a business ultraportable that can take a beating. This is why the E6400 still attracts me - even if it is bigger, I know that it can take whatever I throw at it (or whatever I throw it at....not to imply that I abuse my laptops or anything.)

On a related tangent: The ultraportable Latitude E4200 (2.2lbs, 12" screen, no optical drive, 64GB SSD standard; just to refresh your memory) starts at $849 on the outlet store, with the base specs of 1.2GHz ULV processor, Montevina/GMA 4500MHD, Vista Business, and that sexy, sexy 64GB solid state drive. Add in the coupon and tax, you're looking at roughly $750 for an ultraportable that can slaughter any netbook. I mean, just compare it to the (admittedly overpriced) $699 Asus EEE S101 - double the computing power, double the amount of flash memory, better keyboard, and significantly more screen real estate in an enclosure that is just as thin and light as the EEE, for only $50 more? Sign me up, please.

Short Take: iRiver LPlayer

I picked up iRiver's LPlayer portable media player some time ago, just to see what other manufacturers were doing about Apple's near-monopoly of the digital audio player market. It features 8GB of flash memory and an interesting take on file system navigation.

Design

This thing is TINY. Like, its not just small, it is positively diminutive. In terms of size, its smaller than most laptop touchpads, and not much larger than the 2" screen itself. However, its pretty pudgy, approximately twice the thickness of the venerable iPod nano. The front face is dominated by the aforementioned display, and though it appears as such, the LPlayer does not have a touch screen. Instead, the LPlayer features iRiver's patented D-Click navigation system, in which the screen acts as a 4 way directional pad, and the edges of the screen bezel are clicked to make selections, scroll menus, etc. The bottom of the LPlayer has the power button and volume controls, while the left side houses the headphone jack and mini-USB port. The back has the hold/lock slider, and the top holds a reset button. Overall, due to the lack of any major buttons, the design and look of the LPlayer is very clean.

Feel

This is where the LPlayer starts to slide - literally. The device is so small, and the screen takes up so much of the front that there isn't a natural way to hold it, so usually you pick it up by the edges, which is a lot more awkward than holding an iPod or even the similarly screen-dominated iPhone. The quality of the plastic is pretty good, and overall the construction feels solid. The only minus-point with relation to build quality is the plastic hold switch on the back; it feels very cheap and rattles a bit when moving the device. The headphone jack is placed in a very awkward location, on the lower left hand side, meaning that your hand needs to go around (or under) the headphone jack when holding it.

The D-Click directional pad works....to a point. Implemented properly, as on the previous U10 and Clix devices, its a really cool way of navigating through menus. But on the LPlayer, its extremely unresponsive, and about 30% of clicks are not registered. This makes navigation a rather painful experience, and seriously mars what would otherwise be a very functional device.

UI/Features/Performance

The UI is pleasant, but slow, even without the added annoyance of the unresponsive buttons. It uses a dark theme, with slick looking animations in the main menu, but browsing through file menus is a chore, with just enough lag to make the process irritating. That said, the interface and menu scheme is pretty intuitive, and shouldn't take long to master.

The features are pretty solid for a device this size, with support for most relevant audio and video codecs. Though there are many video codecs supported (including DivX, Xvid, and x264), all of these videos must be converted down to a resolution that the device can play. Codec support is nice, but conversion is annoying, and since conversion is necessary anyways, there isn't much difference here from an iPod, which only supports H.264 and .mp4 videos.

Caveats aside, audio quality is on par for the class, and video playback is quite good, though on a 2" screen, watching anything longer than a short music video or clip is probably not worth it. Watching a 1/2" sized version of Jeremy Clarkson ranting about the shortage of power in the new Ford Fiesta just doesn't do it for me, though this is a comment leveled at video playback on all small devices (iPod nano included). I'd much rather watch videos on my iPhone or a Zune, where the 3.5" screens are large enough to comfortably watch a TV show episode. 

Battery life is somewhat disappointing, rated at 12 hours audio and 3 hours video. That is about half of what the similarly specced 4th gen iPod nano can manage, but given the size of the LPlayer, it makes sense that iRiver had to use a smaller battery. In the real world, the battery runs down a little quicker than iRiver suggests, with an average runtime of 10 hours for audio and 2.5 hours for video. 

Conclusion

The iRiver LPlayer is fantastic on paper - and then you start using it. It is a device with immense potential - inexpensive, small, a good amount of storage, copious codec support, and well designed. But a slow user interface, mediocre battery life, and the unresponsiveness of the D-Click directional pad serve to annoy, and really dampen the enthusiasm I once had for this device. Given functioning D-click buttons and a redesigned UI, I would be very happy with it, but as is, I cannot recommend it over such players as the iPod nano and Zune 8.

Looking for a new device....

In my downtime from posting, I've been considering buying a comanion device to go with my laptop. The three netbooks have all gone back to their manufacturers and my MSI GX600 has now died completely with what I think is a heat-related motherboard failure. I want something to help me take the computing load off the W7s; I was planning to keep the W7s through the Windows 7 cycle, since it runs quite well on the Core 2 Duo/Nvidia 8400M hardware that the W7s has. However, I don't think the W7s will last another 2 or 3 years, just because of the beating it takes in my backpack daily. I figure that another computer will halve the load each computer takes, thus letting me keep both through the Windows 7 cycle, and replace them in three years time.

Now, the question is, what do I buy? My budget is under $600, so netbooks are very much in play here. They're adequate as far as computing power goes, and cheap. The safest option for me here is the Asus EEE 1000HE, and the HP Mini 1000 that I loved would be another good choice. But netbooks are boring, and often, cheaply built.

Expanding my horizons...on eBay, many refurb business ultraportables can be had for under $600. Latitude D420/D430, the Latitude XT tablet, ThinkPad X60, and the HP 2710p tablet are all well under $600, and the two tablets would give me handwriting recognition for notes. I can eliminate the X60 because of the XGA screen resolution (same reason I originally passed the X61 up for the W7s); between the two tablets, I'd take the Latitude XT, since it features dual digitizers (both passive and active touchscreens) and an ATI X1250 integrated graphics chipset that outclasses the Intel GMA 950 igp in the HP. The Latitude D420 and D430 are extremely similar hardware-wise, so going for the cheaper D420 is the better idea. This pares my notebook options to the Dell D420 and Latitude XT.

Notebooks are kind of big though, so lets look smaller. UMPCs and MIDs. As far as MIDs go, theres only really one available on the market, the Aigo P8860/Gigabyte M528. It seems nice, with a slideout keyboard and 800MHz Atom processor, but...with only 4GB memory and a pared down Linux OS, it doesn't seem that much more powerful than my iPhone or a Nokia N810 (more on this in just a sec). A UMPC, on the other hand, seems like it would be perfect. Heres the problem though - only the newer UMPCs are worth using (OQO 2+, Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium, Sony UX, etc) and they are waaaaaay too expensive, at anywhere between $900 and $1400. The older UMPCs (Samsung Q1p, Asus R2H, OQO model 01) are far slower, have much lower res screens, and way less battery life, but they can be had for $400 on eBay. Yeah....how about not. There were just far too many issues with the original Origami devices.

Back to the Nokia N810 - the tasks I anticipate myself using this companion device for pretty much boil down to browsing/IM, pdf viewing, and watching unconverted Xvids. I figure I can even get by with relying on the school computers for editing office documents and stuff. Thus, with such a basic list of tasks, getting the original MID, the Nokia Internet Tablet, seems like a viable plan. This is especially true for the N810, which even has a keyboard like the Aigo MID. And, awesomely, the N810 goes for well under $250, making it far and away the cheapest thing on my list. Its easily the most portable as well, and has great battery life. However, its about as powerful as my iPhone, just with more freedom due to its Maemo linux-based OS. The good thing is that it handles every task on my list (even the Xvid viewing, though reports of dropped frames are concerning), but the bad thing is that anything outside of that list is beyond the capability of the N810. And the fact that my iPhone gets about halfway there, other than the Xvids and the IMing, the N810 just doesn't make much sense and creates too much redundancy in my devices. Also, I would be forced to carry my laptop most of the time anyways, just because of the limitations associated with the N810.

So my options: Asus EEE 1000HE, HP Mini 1000, Dell D420 and Latitude XT. Or, if I convince someone to let me have a newer UMPC for under $600, that'd be perfect. We'll see what I end up getting.

Let me know if you have a good idea that I didn't consider or overlooked.

PS: consider this my return to blogging.

--The Technicist.