Dell Latitude D620 - After 3 Years
by Steve
(UK)
I have a Dell Latitude D620 which was purchased with 12 months warranty in 2006. The laptop is still going strong but has had a couple of “hiccups” in the past:
Hiccup 1: The battery, which is a standard six cell battery, failed to hold its charge after owning the laptop for just under a year, even after a full charge the laptop would run for about 10 minutes. Dell replaced the battery free of charge. After a further twelve months I had the same issue with the replacement battery but again Dell support replaced this battery (even though the warranty had expired) but told me that next time I would have to pay for a replacement. Should I have the issue again I will purchase a 9 cell battery.
Hiccup 2: The DVD writer failed a few months ago (3 years old). As the laptop is now out of its warranty I sourced a replacement for £40 from the internet.
Hiccup 3: The laptop overheated around the same time as the DVD writer failing. The fan had stopped spinning; this manifested itself though poor performance (CPU at 100% constantly). The laptop was out of warranty at this point so I plucked up the courage and got my screwdrivers out. The fan is located in such a position that I pretty much had to remove all the internals. The issue turned out simply to be that the fan was clogged up. I removed the blockage and all is now well. A replacement fan would have been £10 from Ebay.
Hiccup 4: The monitor is now quite dull, I have increased the brightness to its maximum but it is definitely not as bright as it used to be, but as I use an external monitor I have not looked into a replacement screen or backlight, though I imagine this would be quite expensive.
I would gladly recommend Dell. The laptop itself still performs very well and outperforms newer entry specification laptops. The issues I have experienced doesn't seem to be uncommon with any type of laptop. I have found Dell customer service to be excellent, very friendly and I was very impressed at receiving a replacement battery even though the laptop was very much out of its warranty. The replacement batteries arrived within 2 days.