What we are seeing is an influx of thinner offerings with a myriad of features targeted at the business
user.
This is what Dell’s business laptop — the Dell Latitude E7440 — is all about. It takes off from current consumer offerings, such as a thin chassis and an incredible matte 1920×1080 full-HD IPS 14” display, yet provides optimum security features you won’t find in just any other similar offering.
What impressed me first about the E7440 was its silver casing made of materials such as aluminum and magnesium alloy. Before even opening it, the E7440 looked sleek and sturdy — a treat for one to see or touch. It has a thickness of only 2.1 centimeters and weighs just over one and a half kilos, surely not a hassle for people on the go.
Its 1.9Ghz Intel i5-4300U CPU and 256-GB SSD was quite evident in its boot-up speed. In just about ten seconds, I am in my Windows 8.1 main screen, ready to begin my “stress test.” But, as I checked the available applications, none of any of the widely used PC apps were installed. Bummer. So I had to make a trial subscription to Office 365 to get the suite and freeware to continue with the review. Although,
most of the time I simply made do with Internet browsing.
One major setback was that it also did not have a built-in DVD drive, something that’s quite expected of a business laptop. As such, be ready with your portable external hard drive if you want to easily install your office programs or link to the office network or cloud to sync with your business applications.
However, all in all, I had no major problems — except for instances when the system froze and I needed to reboot. Also, logging in was a pain because I opted using my Live.com account to access Windows, something I don’t recommend. Setting up a username and password from Windows 8 itself would do.
Apart from the usual Windows hang-ups, the E7440 gives the user the inherent mobility it espouses and the performance it touts with its 4GB RAM, allowing the flexibility of handling several complex computer tasks—enhancing images, watching videos online, accessing a hybrid cloud, completing office tasks, updating social media accounts, and even playing an online game (shhh…) at the
side- simultaneously, wherever I am (depending where the broadband signal is faster).
However, it did lag on several occasions, sometimes even at the login screen itself — when I had to wait for a good two minutes before I could type in my credentials. And when it began processing the subsequent requests, it again stalled for a good three minutes before the Windows 8 main screen finally appeared.
The business laptop
A good point for the E7440 is its attractive and vivid display. It boasts of a vibrant color contrast as RGB (reds, greens, blues) register on screen pretty well with incredible clarity and on vertical or horizontal viewing angles. It also offers impressive sound quality with its speakers (located at the bottom of the chassis) producing solid and loud audio levels without any tinge of distortion.
But, the keyboard was a lowdown—as it was too feeble to even follow our fingers’ instructions, flexing at the slightest amount of pressure. This oftentimes becomes irritating when you try to key in multitudes of characters at the shortest time possible, as it forces you to stop and correct what you
type.
In contrast, the touch pad offers an excellent interface to initialize programs with its smooth surface, which allows your fingers to easily traverse it. And, surprisingly, its pointing stick offers a good alternative, offering great accuracy.
Despite the obvious hang-ups, it is still worth paying a steep price for the Dell E7740 as it offers what any business user or traveller will look for in a laptop—easy to use, easy to bring along, and a solid performer they can rely on.
source: interaksyon.com
