• Tag Archives Dell

  • Digital Archaeology: Dell Latitude D531

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Dell Latitude D531 is an AMD based laptop. The Latitude was Dell’s business line of computers. Recently, they’ve changed their naming schemes to be much more generic as if to obfuscate things. The vast majority, even at this time, were Intel based. However, the D531 was released as a budget model.

    Basic stats include:

    • CPU: AMD Turion
    • RAM: 3 GB
    • Video:
    • Screen: 1280×800

    For more complete specs, check out the output from HardInfo.

    AMD based laptops at the time tended to be lower end units. The reason being that AMD processors were slower than their contemporary Intel counterparts and less power efficient. The advantage in this case is that you got a bargain priced machine with the build quality of a typical Latitude. Whereas many AMD based laptops might have crappy keyboards, lower quality displays or flimsy chassis, that was not the case here.

    In addition, despite the AMD options being slower, this wasn’t necessarily noticeable if the machine was being used for basic office tasks, which many Latitude’s probably would be. However, the extra battery life of a Core 2 Duo based machine would be an advantage if you were often using your laptop for extended periods disconnected from an AC outlet.

    There’s not a significant amount of upgrade potential with this laptop. There are faster AMD processors that would work in it but it wouldn’t make a huge difference. The current 3GB of RAM can be upgraded to a maximum of 4GB. Like most older laptops, upgrading to an SSD would probably be one of the best upgrades you could do. The fact that at least 8 GB of RAM is not supported is always disappointing in a 64-bit system.

    Though this laptop can technically run Windows 10, it won’t perform very well especially given the maximum limit of 4 GB of RAM. Windows XP should be lightning fast on this machine and Windows 7 should run reasonably well. Linux will run OK as well. It’s really modern web browsing that suffers the most on older hardware like this. Currently, I’m running Xubuntu on this machine.

    Like all machines I use, this one has BOINC installed and crunches various tasks when it is on. It is still capably of crunching tasks for all of the projects I normally participate in including Einstein@home, Milkyway@home, Asteroids@home, Universe@home, Rosetta@home, and World Community Grid. You can see how it is doing overall at FreeDC.


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  • Digital Archaeology: Dell Latitude D430

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Dell Latitude D430 is meant to be an ultraportable. Even by today’s standards, it is still pretty small for a laptop. In terms of depth and width, you can’t really get much smaller and still have a full size keyboard and trackpad. I suppose that modern ultraportables have gotten a bit thinner but not that much.

    There are always tradeoffs for size though. Being this small means that there isn’t a lot of space for useful things like larger batteries, robust cooling, or extra ports. Or less useful (these days) options like optical drives. And of course there’s the smaller, lower resolution screen. A discrete GPU is really out of the question and to make up for the smaller battery and reduced cooling capabilities, a slower ultra low voltage (ULV) processor is used.

    Hardware in this laptop includes:

    • CPU: Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.2 GHz
    • RAM: 2 GB DDR 1066
    • Video: Intel Mobile 945GM/GS Express
    • Screen: 12-inch @ 1280×800

    For more complete hardware specs, check out the output from HardInifo.

    One other sacrifice made for the small size is with the hard drive. It has a 1.8″ drive instead of the more common 2.5″ size in most laptops. It also only runs at 4200 RPM. It is fairly low capacity (60 GB) and is going to be slower than the average hard drive.

    I guess something this size could be a possible alternative to a tablet if you really needed something that would fairly easily slide into something like a purse. Otherwise, I’m not sure why you would make so many sacrifices to get something this small. I mean if you are carrying a backpack or laptop bag anyway you might as well get something a little bigger with a lot more power probably for the same price, even at the time.

    Despite being a low voltage processor, the one in my D430 runs pretty hot when under full load, occasionally even throttling. This is a pretty old laptop so its possibly I just need to take it apart clean out the dust and reapply thermal paste. It seems pretty clean though so I’m not sure that’s the issue. It could just be that the small size and design makes for poor cooling. The heatsink and fan are small by necessity.

    This laptop would have originally shipped with Windows XP though I am currently running Xubuntu on it. In addition to the Windows XP sticker on the palm rest area in also has a “Core Duo inside” sticker. Seems a little odd as the CPU is a Core 2 Duo. Normally, the sticker would reflect that.

    It’s not going to break any records, but like all the machines I run, this one is running BOINC and crunching tasks for various projects including Einstein@home, Milkyway@home, Asteroids@home, Rosetta@home and Universe@home. Universe@home hasn’t had any tasks lately but this machine should be able to crunch them. It also hasn’t received and Rosetta tasks but the 2GB of RAM may not be enough for that project. You can see how it is doing overall at FreeDC.


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  • Digital Archaeology: Dell Inspiron E1705

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Inspiron line has long been Dell’s main consumer laptop models (well, until very recently when they for some reason started naming all their machines very generically). The Inspiron E1705 was released in the 2005 timeframe. It is for all practical purposes identical to the Inspiron 9400. They just had different default configuration options and were targeted at different markets. It is also substantially the same as the M90 and XPS models of the same time period, again, with different default configuration options. I made a post about the 9400 a while back and a lot of this will sound the same because they are basically the same machine with some configuration differences.

    The Inspiron E1705 supported a very large range of hardware options. There were two different motherboards used. One supported add-in video cards such as the FX2500M, GeForce Go 7800 and 7900GTX among others while the second motherboard option only supported Intel’s integrated graphics. Display options included a 17″ Wide Screen WXGA+ (1440×900) panel or a 17″ Ultrasharp Wide Screen WUXGA (1920×1200) panel. The processor could be anything from a single core 32-bit Core Solo T1300 running at 1.66 GHz all the way up to 64-bit Core 2 Duo T7600 running at 2.33 GHz.

    My particular E1705 is definitely one of the lower end models. Specs include:

    • CPU: Core Solo T1350 @ 1.86 GHz
    • Graphics/Chipset: Intel 945GM
    • Memory: 1GB DDR2-533 (2x512MB)
    • Display: 17″ WXGA+ (1440×900)
    • Hard Drive: 80GB 5400RPM
    • Optical Drive: 8x DVD +/-RW with Dual-Layer DVD-R Write Support
    • Networking: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet and V.92 56K Modem, 802.11b/g WLAN

    Plus tons of expansion slots and ports including 4 USB 2.0 ports, an ExpressCard 54mm slot, FireWire, 5-in-1 Flash Reader, headphone and microphone connections, 1 DVI-D, 1 VGA, and 1 S-Video Out. I miss all the built-in I/O options laptops used to have. These days you generally have to find a USB-C dongle with whatever you need.

    As far as upgrade possibilities, a Core 2 Duo T7600 could be added and up to 4GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM is supported. Unfortunately, there are no graphics update options as this motherboard in the one with the built-in Intel chipset/graphics. However, the Intel version is the more reliable one. nVidia chips of that era had issues with the solder used and almost always inevitable fail at some point. There is also an ATI (X1400) version but that one seems to be more rare though that’s what I have in my 9400.

    This laptop was made with Windows XP and Vista in mind. It is also capable of running Windows 7 and even Windows 10 (though some more RAM would definitely be needed). However, modern operating systems supporting 32-bit CPUs are gettig pretty hard to find these days. Windows 10 dropped support in 2020. I’m currently running a 32-bit version of Debian which is the only mainstream Linux distribution I am aware of that still does new 32-bit releases. The Insprion E1705 is capable of being upgraded to 64-bit CPUs as mentioned above, however it is still limited to about 4 GB of RAM due to limitations of the chipset.

    Like pretty much any computer I ever own, this one is running BOINC whenever it is turned on. It still gets work for at least Einstein@home and maybe a couple of others.

    Overall, this seems to be a pretty solid laptop with a great deal of expansion possibility for its time. The build quality is decent and the keyboard feels pretty good. However, it isn’t as nice in that regard as later Latitudes and Precisions. Despite pushing the CPU at 100% all the time with BOINC, it runs cool and quiet. The large size no doubt helps some with that, plus it has a pretty anemic single core CPU at the moment. If I had been in the market for a laptop at the time this one was being sold, it probably would have been a top contender (though with a Core 2 Duo CPU and the higher resolution screen).

    Despite having some fairly significant upgrade potential, I doubt I will be upgrading this one. I would rather start with the model with the higher resolution screen and perhaps the ATI graphics option if I were going to bother. Having said that, there’s a good chance I have a Core 2 Duo that would work and some extra memory so who knows…but I’ll probably save that for the 9400 I have.

    Check out the complete specs of this laptop via HardInfo here.

    And if you are curious how it is getting along in BOINC, see it’s einstein@home stats or check out its overall stats via FreeDC.


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