9. Breaking In The Lid

Under the keyboard is a heat pipe to help remove heat from the GeForce4 Go GPU. We think this is an innovative solution that does help reduce the temperature of the GeForce4 Go GPU. During our use of the system, we didn't find the keyboard getting hot, so it seems to work well. We think this was an excellent and innovative idea by Dell.

In this picture you can see the heat pipe that Dell uses to remove heat from the GeForce4 Go GPU. The well designed innovation didn't cause the keyboard to get hot at all, which was a big surprise to us.

The test unit features a 15" UXGA active matrix TFT display, with a native resolution of 1600x1200 with 16 million colors. As you already know from the title of this article, the unit can be configured at the point of sale with the GeForce4 Go in either the 64 MB or 32 MB configuration. We would rate the display quality as good, but there are a few things about it that we don't like. Ever since the early Latitude C800 and Inspiron 8000, we have never been too crazy about the way that the display attaches to the machine.

Our Dell test unit's 15" UXGA active matrix TFT display from another angle.

The hinge quality was somewhat sloppy on our review unit, which caused the display to move around a little bit more than usual. The display field of view is more restrictive than that of the IBM A31p, which can be both good and bad, as we pointed out in our A31p review. We noticed that as we changed our angle of view, the display had a tendency to get a little lighter or darker than normal. In some ways, I think we were spoiled by the FlexView technology that IBM A31p offered. We do think that the overall quality of the display is good, but, in our opinion, Dell needs to try do something to stiffen up and strengthen the hinges, which we think is one of the continued weak points of the Dell Latitude 8xx and Inspiron 8xxx product families. The lid of the unit is of the same durable plastic that Dell has been using in these product families. We found the lid to flex a little more that we would like and we would have preferred it to be a bit stiffer to help avoid putting pressure on the back of the panel, which can cause problems. The latch on the lid also takes a little practice to master, but we noticed that, as it was broken in over time, it became a little easier to use.

A view from of the top of our test unit with the lid closed.