It was just over a month ago that I got a Dell Latitude 7450 from our corporate IT group. It wasn’t my first choice, but as Redgate grows, they’re trying to be more secure and standard. I didn’t have a good reason to not try it, to I agreed to give it a try. My boss said if it was a problem, we’d get an exception and I’d choose another one. I had hoped for another HP Spectre, but this really is just a toaster to me. I need it to just work.
The Design
This is a bit heaver than my old Spectre, but also larger. It also has more ports.
I got the laptop, so it doesn’t fold over into a book or tablet or tent. I had thought that might be useful at times, but in 8 years of two Spectre versions that opened past 10 degrees, I think I’ve done that 5 times.
The screen is nice and works well for me. I like that I have both USB C and USB B ports on the laptop. I wish I had one of each on each side, but I have 2 Cs on the left and 2 Bs on the right. It’s a very minor gripe.
I do like I have an HDMI port built in, which is something my Spectre was missing. This means I can take something else out of my travel kit.
I got this with 32GB of RAM, which is probably a good reason why Windows 11 runs smoothly here. I also got a 1TB drive, which is overkill. I had a 512 in the last machine and after 5 years, I still had space.
The keyboard is OK, fairly standard, backlit, and responds well. The trackpad is large, and seems to work well with the left/right clicks.
The touchscreen is good and it also works with a pen, and I got an Active one from Amazon that I’ve used in whiteboard sessions with customers.
Annoyances
The big thing was the trackpad for me. It is a little sensitive and if a finder or hand brushes it, I get some weird actions. Mostly I do something the causes windows to minimize, which is really annoying. I’ve tried tuning down some of the actions, but I need to do more. It doesn’t cause too many problems, but enough that it’s on my mind.
The Home and End keys moved to the top row. They were on the side of my old machine, and I was used to those. I still can’t quite hit home and end without looking, or without hitting insert. I also lost my page up/down keys as well. I can use Funtion+up arrow (or down), but that’s not something I think about.
Concerns
I’ve had 2 blue screens coming out of a closed machine in a month. The system was unresponsive once and when I tried to CTRL+ALT+DEL it blue screened after a few minutes.
I’m keeping an eye on it. This might be my machine or this model, but if I get a few more, I might need to replace it.
Overall
Overall I learned that I don’t really care anymore about a laptop. It’s a tool, and I need it to work, but I’m not that wedded to the hardware. They keyboard matters to me, but of a bunch I tested, they were all find enough. Small differences, but overall they worked.
Other than that, this thing works well and runs fine. I still think some of the Win11 stuff that changed wasn’t an improvement and I need to figure out if I can turn some things off, but it works well.
I’d get another one of these without complaints. Assuming the blue screens stop.