Dell Latitude D6x0 series

The Latitude D6x0 series is the 14"/14.1" corporate model. It aims to combine heavy-duty power with reasonable portability, and differs primarily from D8x0 series in screen size. 

All are two spindle designs, with a "D-bay" modular bay which can interchange optical drives, a second hard drive, floppy disk or a second battery. All models have a smart card socket, PCMCIA socket, and 9-pin serial port, a "D-dock" port for docking station or port replicator, and have an internal socket for a 802.11 wireless card.

The D600 and D610 share a common form factor, battery socket, and have a parallel printer port.

The D620 and D630 share a common form factor, battery socket, and do not have a parallel printer port. Both have support for an optional internal Bluetooth module, a socket for an optional mobile broadband card, and have an external switch for disabling any wireless connections.

The D600 (and simultaneously introduced D800) was Dell's first business-oriented notebook based on the Pentium-M processor; it used the first-generation "Banias" or Dothan Pentium M chips running on a 400 MT/s FSB on DDR memory. It had a PATA hard drive and a D-series modular bay, and used an ATI Radeon 9000 GPU. It had a 14" screen, in regular (non-widescreen) form factor. Unlike later D6x0 series machines, both memory sockets were accessible from a single cover on the bottom of the system.

Many Latitude models had a near-clone Inspiron, in the case of the D600, it was the Inspiron 600M. Differences include that the 600M does not work with the Dell D-Dock, and the case styling is slightly different. The motherboards, screens and hard drive caddies are all physically interchangeable.

The Latitude D600 used a PA-10/PA-12 charger and came with a DVD drive, 2 x USB, 1 x TV, 1 x network, 1 x parallel, 1 x serial and 1 monitor output. The hard drive is accessible through a cover on the left hand front side of the lower case and is secured by 1 screw. After removing the screw, the hard drive can then slide out.

The D610 was an update of the D600 design; it used the same case design and very similar specs. The chipset was updated (to the "Sonoma" platform) and used DDR2 memory, and it used a second-generation "Dothan" Pentium M chips running on a 533 MT/s FSB (and available in higher speeds.) The location of one memory socket was moved to underneath the keyboard. The D610 was available with either an ATI Mobility Radeon X300 discrete GPU or Intel integrated graphics. It still continued to use a PATA hard drive and D-series modular bay.

Many Latitude models had a near-clone Inspiron, in the case of the D610, it was the Inspiron 610M.

Some Dell Latitude D610 units with a dedicated ATI x300 graphics card seem to have problems with the audio-out jack. Symptoms of this problem include a noise or whine when an audio device is connected to the audio-out jack. Up to this date Dell does not have a clear solution to this problem.

A number of Dell Latitude D610 units will develop microscopic fractures of the motherboard. Symptoms of this problem may include inability to turn on the computer, unexpected shut down within 30 seconds of being turned on, or visible screen artifacts while in operation. This problem also frequently contributes to the blue screen of death (BSOD) in Windows.

The Dell Latitude D610 was intended to have a 3-4 year life. After this period, some known issues include deterioration of CPU and other issues causing poor performance, especially with newer software.

The D620 (and simultaneously introduced D820) was Dell's first business-oriented notebook with a dual core processor available. Initially available with the interim "Yonah" Core Duo processors, it was sold with the first-generation mobile "Merom" Core 2 chips once those became available from Intel in the Fall of 2006; both run on a 667MT/s bus. 

It was initial sold only with Intel integrated graphics, but an option to upgrade to a discrete NVidia GPU became available after a few months. It replaced the raised pointing stick with a "low profile" model, and introduced the option of 4-cell and 9-cell batteries in addition to the standard 6-cell model. It uses DDR2 memory and is compatible with both PC2-4200 (533 MHz) and PC2-5300 (667 MHz) memory.

Although the D620 is capable of accepting 4 GB of physical memory, but because of the limitation by the BIOS of a notebook (and not because the user is using a 32-bit or 64-bit OS), it will only see 3.5 GB of memory, or 3.3 with on board video (memory is shared). Using a 64-bit OS will not help the user to see all 4 GB of RAM on the D620.

The D620 has one mono speaker located in the base below the touchpad. It has no option to expand to stereo without using external speakers or headphones.

There was no near-clone Inspiron model for the D620.
 

All early D620 models were known for faulty LCD screens. All of these early models suffered from light bleeding, where a black screen would show light bleeding in from the bottom of the screen. This wasn't fixed until almost a year into production. In addition, some D630 screens are known for having bad LCD pixels. The D620, D630, D820 and D830 were available with a Intel integrated GMA or Nvidia Graphics Card. All Nvidia models will suffer from early failure of the graphics chip due to defective solder and "underfill" of the BGA graphics core as it responds to thermal fluctuations. 

This is attributed to a faulty manufacturing on part of Nvidia which caused a multimillion recall not only of some Dell notebooks but also some HP, Compaq and Apple products Affected models. The failure manifests itself by stripes or "artifacts" on the LCD AND also an external screen or by the total absence of an image. 

There is no permanent fix for it and the early replacements by Dell included only the same but new faulty chips which will also fail eventually. So far only the models with the Intel graphics seem to have survived. Dell tried to prolong the lifetime of the Nvidia chips with a BIOS update which causes the fan to run more continuously and thus reduce the strain from repeated heating/cooling cycles on the graphics chip. However all these chips will die eventually.

The D630 is an update of the D620 design. It differed most significantly in being based on the "Santa Rosa" (mobile 965) chipset, which supported the 800MT/s models of the mobile Core 2 Duo (both the Merom 7xx0 series and later the Penryn-based 8x00/9x00 series.) 

It also had newer versions of the graphics processor options, support for Intel's "Turbo Memory" flash cache (although this uses the same card slot as the mobile broadband card), and support for internal Wireless-N. It also added a 4-pin Firewire IEEE1394 port. It uses DDR2 memory and is compatible with PC2-5300 (667 MHz) and PC2-6400 (800 MHz) memory will work, but at PC2-5300 speeds.

Unlike the D830, the D630 has non stereo speakers.

There was no near-clone Inspiron model for the D630.

The D630c was a slight variant model of the D630; it featured a "manageable" version of the motherboard chipset, and base configuration was slightly more powerful. Except for the chipset management, all of those "base features" were available as options on the regular D630.