The video contains most of the details that you would want to know, but I did throw in something funny at the end that I ended up having to fix. Hope you guys enjoy my "less than 24 hr" editing job on this video LOL.
I'm going to buy one of these computers right now for travelling purposes. I'm going to install Mypal and Supermium on this laptop and also run Panda Dome Antivirus on it. I want to keep this model on XP when I buy it
The Dell D620 and D630 takes an eternity to start up IF you shut it down or restart before it finished posting (or you are saving a bios setting that requires a restart), and it only gets way slower on a D630 with latest A17 bios, a beefy X9000 extreme CPU, and full 8gb of RAM installed. And while these laptops aren't the best on keyboards and tracking stick and such, it has got real magnesium alloy panel on the lid and the base cover and thick plastic palmrest. It flexes more than the ThinkPad but also breaks even less screw threads than my ThinkPads do (usually 1-2 threads broken off on my ThinkPad T4x series).
BTW that unknown port on the Dell Docking station is actually for an external D-bay device, here's a picture c.76.my/Malaysia/dell-pd01s-d-bay-laptop-external-media-bay-dvd-rom-drive-komputown-1302-21-komputown@1.jpg
The Dell Recovery software is a separate partition on the drive. If someone wiped that from the drive and then re-installed the OS to get maximum disk space, the recovery sequence no longer works because there's nothing on the hard drive for it to use. Do a search for XP boot graphic or something similar and you'll find instructions on changing that image. When I worked in a sea of similar laptops, it was worth having my boot screen different to locate it when someone felt like doing pranks. Having Joe's laptop boot with "This is Joe's Dell" takes all the fun out of swapping nearly-identical-on-the-outside laptops.
I think the GPU memory goes up to 224 MB, but it's shared with the RAM if i'm not mistaken. My Dell Latitude D520 does, and it also has a C2D T7200. Plays 720p RU-vid videos perfectly.
Things take forever to launch because the hard drives are so S-L-O-W. That's why I routinely replace older laptop hard drives with a larger SSD. 240GB for under $70 is a great improvement over the original 60 or 80GB drive. "Migrate OS to SSD" is a very useful piece of software and USB to SATA drive converters are available for $20. Just count the number of passes the "travelling dots" make during boot with the original drive and after replacing it with an SSD.
The D620 you have is marginally adequate for using Dragon. It will work for small documents but trying to add to or edit a 100,000 word document in Word is painfully slow - speak a word and wait for it to respond - and wait - and wait - and wait... Might be OK for a one chapter document, but I sometimes write an entire book as a single document.
There are various flavors of the D620 and the D630. I've been through a number of them as they're my writing platform of choice (more vertical screen real estate than the later ones, reasonably fast formatting text and very inexpensive - about $100 on Ebay with OS, battery and power supply). The D620 I'm using today has a Centrino Duo processor, NVidia Quadro NVS 110M graphics, Broadcom gigabit wired network, Intel 3945ABG wireless network, 4GB RAM, 480GB SSD and 32 bit Windows XP. I find that Win 7 and up get in my way at times but XP lets me do whatever I want to do in the way I want to do it. (My programmer roots are showing ;-) Changing to an SSD really speeds up the machine. I have a Dell E6430 for the few pieces of software that I find useful under Win 10 (Amazon's create-an-ebook package) and an ancient Vostro 1000 running Win 7 to monitor my solar power installation - it's old but it works fine as a process control machine, especially for $25. Like some other laptops, the D620 seems to collect lint in the fan area. A company I once did depot maintenance for used a number of HP laptops that needed the covers removed and the fan cleaned almost every time they were in for any maintenance, even software updates - opening the bottom was almost like watching a cat bring up a hairball. I've had greater success with the Dells. My first novel is here: www.amazon.com/dp/B01LVU5ILA and was listed today on one of the ebook recommendation sites: pamspriderecommendations.com/
+enaqtim I unclogged the fan. I used a small screwdriver to move a dust bunny that was preventing the fan blades from moving under the power of the little motor.
currently working on another dell at the moment. While it's not with an OEM set of discs, i am restoring it to the licensed version of windows. Video is coming soon.
