Dell: Musing on the XFR D630 (Review)

I know the D630 is an old model, and I'm getting a hold of the highly specialized XFR very late in its lifespan... but the XFR D630 is still the pinnacle of Dell's Fully Ruggedized lineup. I'm going to give my impressions, but some basic familiarity with a D630, or similar Dell D-series Latitude notebook would be helpful to understanding the contrasts. Unfortunately, I don't have a Panasonic Toughbook-- the primary competition-- to cross-compare.

The first thing you notice about this guy is the heft-- it's big and very heavy. At roughly twice the height of a D630, you almost get the feel that the case of the notebook is a throw-back to a notebook of the mid-90s. Once you get past the greatly increased size and weight, you realize that you're looking at a totally different beast compared to a garden variety D-series. In fact, superficially it bears no resemblance to a D630 whatsoever. So, why is it still a D630? The guts are all still there. While the chassis is completely overhauled, if you remember basically where the ports, drives, access panels, and buttons were, they'll be in approximately the same locations on the XFR. While it's arguably different enough to be its own model, it still has to make-do with the D630 motherboard and the layout dictated by the basic D630 design.

So about this chassis? Is it rugged? In a word, yes. The outer casing appears to be hardened plastic with rubber bumpers around the sides and corners-- think Pelican case. Also in common with a ruggedized case, there's a nice Every single port can be sealed with a water-resistant hatch. The access panels in the bottom are secured by a simple screw, and then a lever to lock them down into place. The keyboard looks like a fairly standard D-series keyboard, but there's an extra water-resistant membrane visible underneath. The touchpad is still there, recessed, and the two buttons for the touchpad are underneath a rubber membrane.

So while on the subject of the keyboard, let's talk about usability. Obviously this is all subjective and heavily biased in relation to my experience with the D630, but I have to start somewhere with a baseline.

Input: The keyboard at first seems a bit mushier than a standard D630, and flexes quite a bit more towards the edges. There'e even significant flex evident when pressing down on the chassis panel directly above the keyboard. Even though it doesn't seem great, the center of the keyboard is fairly rigid and while not as good as a standard D630, it passes as acceptable. The touchpoint (nipple) mouse is retained between the G, H and B keys, but the left and right mouse buttons directly under the spacebar that normally work with the nipple mouse have been deleted. That makes it somewhat of a useless appendix. The recessed trackpad makes it a little harder to press on accident, but it also makes it feel fairly small. The option for scrolling hot-zones is preserved, but they're much harder to hit with the frame around the touchpad. The mouse buttons underneath the touchpad are mounted under rubber domes as noted earlier. I've got some very mixed feelings about this: The feedback is acceptable, and it's fairly comfortable to use the rubberized buttons, but at the same time, you're trying to push your thumbs down into a recess rather than just pressing on a button on top. My ultimate impression was that they were too short, top to bottom. If they had extended maybe 5mm towards the front of the case, my big meaty thumbs wouldn't have felt cramped when trying to press the buttons.

I'd like to give special mention to the (non-optional) fingerprint reader. It's located on the right wrist-rest, next to the touchpad. The mechanism is in a recess under a recessed plastic door. It's wide enough to comfortably use, but it gets a bit in the way when touch-typing.

The screen, however is the bright (har har) spot of the whole experience. The outdoor-viewable screen is glossy, but it's also polarized and transflective. Indoors, it's bright.... VERY bright, with a very crisp picture. It's a huge step up from some of the grainier D620/D630 screens out there. It really is viewable outside in direct sunlight. Light colors show up better, with a somewhat "3D" type effect visible with a dark item on a light background. While it's not "goregous" outdoors, at least it does work fine in bright, direct sunlight. For work in the dark, two red spotlights are built in to the top of the screen bezel. The only difference from a standard keyboard is that Fn-RightArrow turns the lights on and off.

In terms of ports, it has all of them, and in pretty much standard locations. A minor quibble with the switch to turn wireless on/off-- it's now under a door on the left side. That's fine, but that reduces the convenience factor somewhat. The USB ports on the right side and in the rear are recessed to the point where bulky devices will probably have clearance issues-- obviously a hub or extension cable is needed here. The biggest issue is the optical-- what looks like a standard D-bay has been re-labeled as an X-bay and is not user-removeable at all. You'd have to tear the system down to swap in another device. That means that using the bay as a 2nd battery isn't an option, but I think that's also what was intended. While water resistant, a battery compartment needs to be really, really waterproof. I think that was part of the design decision that locks you into a single optical drive. A 9-pin serial port is retained as is a 4-pin, non-powered Firewire port.

For power and accessories, standard D-series accessories work. The power adapter is a standard 90-watt. Worth noting if you have a >90w unit floating around from a Precision-- the housing on those are too wide, and won't fit into the recessed power port on the back of the XFR. Those of course do work fine on the garden variety D630, but because the port isn't recessed.

Beyond looking things over, I didn't have a chance to test the anti-shock mounted hard drive, the ability to take the computer to a hose and hose it off, etc. Sorry in advance if you were looking for a torture test. With these things priced the way they are, it's comforting to know they are rugged, but I'm not going to put it to the test needlessly. I like my job and don't want to lose it. Lemme know if you have any questions.