Five Easy (if Wordy) Things I Hate about the Dell Latitude E6510

I’m a Mac guy who has for the most part uncomplainingly used the Dell laptops my employer has supplied for seven years. I’ve gotten used to these Dull information appliances as a way to get the job done, however joylessly, but I’ve never hated a laptop with the white-hot intensity of the Dell Latitude E6510 I’m currently using—my third Dell for this job, and arguably the worst ever. Why?

1. Batteries and power non-management:

1.1: Laughably short battery life—The standard battery, that allows the unit to fit in my laptop bag, lasts about 45 minutes. 

1.2: A larger, higher-capacity battery is available, but the single battery bay (and zero backup power on main logic board) means the charger has to be plugged in to swap batteries—or you’ll lose everything currently in RAM. An annoyingly time-consuming restart follows each time. 

1.3: The battery bay is at the back of the unit, so the battery can’t be physically swapped out (say, from the small battery to the larger one, before a meeting) if the unit is on its docking stand. (My previous Dell had a small, permanent battery accessible from the underside, which was on all the time and kept RAM contents alive while swapping batteries on either side of the computer, easily accessible while on or off the docking station.)

1.4: I have played with my power management settings in Windows, but can’t get this thing to reliably give me a warning about low battery/time to plug in. It just dies. 

1.5: Even after reading and re-reading online help, I don’t get the difference between “sleep” and “hibernate,” particularly in relation to the laptop’s lid being open. Some combination of “sleep” and “hibernate” should allow the laptop, when on batteries, to go into a low-power-consumption mode on its own after a defined period of time, and manage its remaining power carefully enough to allow hours or days (depending on battery state) without losing what’s in RAM. It doesn’t work that way. 

1.6: “Resuming Windows”—If you’re lucky, you’ll get back to this laptop before it sucks the final electrons of energy from its battery. But even if you do, you’ll still wait about 30 seconds every time you come back, wake it up, and wait while it displays a bogus animation and the message “Resuming windows.” Why does an OS and hardware, that presumably keeps its last-used state in RAM while it hibernates or sleeps, need a time-consuming “resuming” step?

 2. Space heater: This laptop runs hot, and a fan blows this hot air out of a vent on the left side, right where I like to position my left hand when not typing. Even in the winter, the heat is so intense as to make you move your hand from where it naturally rests. If you set a cold drink over there, it will actually make it lukewarm after 15-20 minutes. If you lay a piece of chocolate nearby, it will melt.

3. Grime catcher: The speakers on either side of the keyboard sound pretty good, but the black perforated metal over them (serving as a grille) and extending far further than it needs to (for styling, I guess) appears to be almost designed to catch debris in its tiny holes, along with the various other gaping Catch-o-Matic™ cracks between subassemblies surrounding the keyboard. You know how the MacBook Pro has a smooth, seamless surface? This is the exact opposite, and I resent it.

4. Keyboard smarmyness: The last Dell laptop I was given had a lightly textured keyboard that showed a bit of smoothing/glossing on heavily used keys after three years, but this one has smooth keys that almost seem intended to show fingerprints/glossy wear/dust.

5. Beefy. This baby’s level of miniaturization is state of the art—for 1993. And this boat anchor ultimately does no more than the MacBook Air of a colleague who brought his featherweight laptop from his last job.

I am no fan of Microsoft or MS Windows, but in this case I’ve got to say that I actually feel Windows 7 Enterprise is being held back by the shoddy hardware it runs on.