Design and features
Dell's Latitude E6400 is the little brother of the E6500, providing a 14.1-inch, ambient light sensing 1280x800 screen instead of the 15.4-inch equivalent. Otherwise, for all intents and purposes, it is the same in design.
It is equipped with stereo speakers straddling either side of the keyboard; both a trackpoint and touchpad (each with its own buttons, ala Lenovo, with a middle mouse button for the trackpoint); three USB ports; a combined USB/eSATA port; the rarely seen 1394 port; secure card slot, although oddly a lack of fingerprint scanner; ExpressCard 54 slot; SD card reader; VGA; DisplayPort; gigabit Ethernet; and a DVD+-RW drive.
As tends to be the case with business laptops, the Latitude is all black, but with a blackened aluminium lid that gives it a hint of stylishness. The keyboard can be backlit too, for an extra AU$44, something we prefer to Lenovo's ThinkLight solution, where a white LED blares down from the top of the screen.
The usual dock connector can be found on the bottom, which can connect into Dell's stands/port replicators, offering PS2 keyboard/mouse, two USB ports, one USB/eSATA port, parallel and serial ports, VGA, dual-DVI and dual-DisplayPort connectivity.
Internally the E6400 features an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2.4GHz, with 2GB RAM and a 250GB hard drive. An Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M gives it a powerful graphics capability too — at least a lot more powerful than your standard Intel integrated graphics fare found in the business world. It's also the only laptop we received with Windows XP installed from the get go, under the "Vista Business Downgrade" licensing model.
Software-wise, Dell bundles its Control Panel software that manages network connections, power, display and security settings, including an interesting LCD privacy screen, which overlays the screen with faint squares so you can really only see what's on the screen from directly face on. Apart from the Windows Live toolbar in Internet Explorer, crapware is surprisingly absent.
Performance
With a decent processor and impressive graphics card for a business laptop, the Latitude E6400 was always going to be a good performer. While business laptops are usually no good for gaming, and don't need to be, the Latitude's 3DMark06 score of 1875 makes it capable of tackling older games or basic 3D work. Its PCMark05 score of 4861 is also impressive as a result of the CPU/GPU combination, making it capable of tackling heavy application use.
With the amount of power behind it, you'd be forgiven for thinking the battery time would be horrific, but the Latitude pulled through. With all power-saving features turned off, screen brightness and volume set to maximum and an XviD file played back to stress the machine in a worst-case scenario, the Latitude lasted three hours, 25 minutes and 34 seconds, only bested by the Toshiba Portege A600, a machine which demands far less power.
The Latitude E6400 gives that rare mix of good features, performance, battery life and price that makes it a compelling business laptop. It's not as invincible as Lenovo's offerings, but it definitely ticks every other box.
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