Dell Latitude D531

The Latitude D531 is the latest AMD-based notebook from Dell. It has a

magnesium alloy shell, which enhances its durability. It comes with an in-built

security chip but we missed having a fingerprint reader or webcam, which are

pretty common in notebooks of its class these days. It has an 80 GB hard disk,

which may be a slight concern, but by paying a few extra bucks you can customize

your notebook at Dell's website.

In performance, it scored 2870 in PC Mark05, which makes it worthy for

business applications. The score is better than what we got from some of the sub

50K Intel-based notebooks reviewed in the April '07 issue. Even in Business

Winstone it scored 31.8, which is good enough for notebooks in this price

bracket and more than the likes of HCL T2250, Intex challenger 012DW (reviewed

April 2007) . The laptop ships with WinXP by default, but Dell claims it to be

Vista ready. However, when we tried running Vista on it, everything worked

smoothly, except Aero. In Battery Mark it gave a backup time of 2.52 hr, which

is good for business travelers and should suffice their needs.

Bottomline: It's a good performer for business users, but we

expected a few more features such as a fingerprint reader and webcam for this

price.