Business laptops tend to look much like one other, rarely deviating from the conservative, standard black exterior. The Dell Latitude D630 ($2,079 direct) is an exception. It has a sleek, professional appearance that doesn't scream conformity. What really counts, however, is what lies within its case. With Intel's new Centrino Duo platform (aka Santa Rosa), the D630 moves to the Intel 965GM chipset with its more powerful integrated graphics core and native 802.11n wireless support. Dell has also gone with a 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, which takes advantage of the new chipset's faster (800-MHz) bus speed. Despite these updates, however, the D630 is configured for small businesses and doesn't pack the performance wallop of the Gateway E-265M and the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 Widescreen.

With its dark-gray exterior, the D630 offers an alternative to users who are hankering to break out of that basic-black business rut. Like the ThinkPad T61 Widescreen, the D630 is sturdy, surrounding its frame with a lightweight magnesium alloy. At 5.7 pounds, it barely outweighs the 5.4-pound T61 Widescreen. (Keep in mind, too, that the D630's 85-Wh battery is bigger than the T61's 56-Wh one). You'll notice that the extended battery (which comes standard) now sticks out from the front, instead of the back. I like this design change, since it adds additional space for resting your palms. The batteries will be compatible with the previous year's Latitude D620 models, but for any models prior to this, you're out of luck.

The D630's 14-inch screen has a matte finish to prevent glare from fluorescent lights, and it has a higher resolution than that of the Gateway E-265M (and the same resolution as that of the T61 Widescreen), at 1,440-by-900. It's ideal for getting as many Excel columns as possible onto the display without having to get a bigger screen (higher resolutions means you can fit more onto a screen). The full-size keyboard is good, though no match for a ThinkPad keyboard. Dell does deserve some credit for adding both a touchpad and a pointing stick for navigation.

The D630 is bursting with other features. Like the Gateway E-265M, it has four USB ports and a FireWire port. The DVD burner might not seem like much, but it's modular, which means you can swap it out with other optical-drive solutions. For security, the laptop integrates a Trusted Platform Module, SmartCard Reader, fingerprint reader, and theft-recovery services via Computrace. An EV-DO modem is located in the base of the system and the antennas are embedded in the notebook screen, giving you access to Verizon's EV-DO Rev A networks. Theoretically, you can achieve up to 3.1 Mbps throughput speeds if you pick up a strong cell-phone signal.

Most of the improvements on the D630 are within, thanks to Intel's new Centrino Duo platform. The platform brings with it a new chipset that supports a faster front-side bus (FSB). This amounts to improved performance scores over previous-generation Latitude models.

The D630 loads a 2-GHz T7300 processor, which will tackle even your toughest workloads. From a performance standpoint, however, the Gateway takes it a step further, with a 2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7500 processor, and the T61 Widescreen and the HP Pavilion HDX9000 go for the gold with the 2.4-GHz T7700 CPU. That's not to say that you can't configure the D630 with these higher-clocked processors, but with the CPU configured in my review unit, the performance edge goes to its competition.

The D630's SYSmark 2007 Preview overall scores are almost 20 percent slower than that of the ThinkPad T61 Widescreen and 24 percent slower than the E-265M's. Loading the Windows XP Professional operating system did help close the performance gap a little, because Win XP isn't as resource-intensive as Vista. But the D630 outshone the HP Pavilion dv2500t and the Fujitsu LifeBook A6030, both consumer laptops with the same components. Its Adobe Photoshop CS2 results are faster than that of our comparison unit, the Dell Inspiron E1705 (Vista) which runs Intel's previous (Napa) chipset—by 9 seconds, though it couldn't dip under a minute, as the Gateway, Lenovo, and HP HDX9000 did. Because the D630 is also the only business laptop in this group to load integrated graphics, it was no match for the E-265M and T61 Widescreen's discrete graphics. (Dell should have an option for discrete graphics in this system by the end of June.) We've come to expect good battery life from Dell machines, and the big 85-Wh battery is no exception. It lasted 3 hours 41 minutes running a DVD movie.

The D630 comes with a standard warranty of three years for parts and labor, including next-business-day on-site service.

Business professionals in need of a portable midrange laptop will find the Dell Latitude D630 an appealing machine. Aside from its good looks (relative to other business laptops), the D630 is repackaged with speed in mind. The Intel Centrino Duo platform brings a new processor, graphics core, and wireless chipset to the D630. For those with larger workloads, however, the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 Widescreen is the performance winner in this category.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the Dell Latitude D630's test scores.