Dell Latitude D430 Coming July 2nd

According to the Dell Taiwan site the Latitude D430 ultraportable notebook, the follow-on to the Latitude D420, will be available on July 2nd. The good news is that it will offer a Solid State hard drive (SSD). The bad news is no new Intel Santa Rosa platform, initially at least.

Following are the specs for the Latitude D430 according to what's available on the Dell Taiwan site:

• Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 (1.2GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB) or Intel Core Solo U1400 (1.2GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
• 1GB DDR2 RAM 533MHz, up to 2GB total
• Intel GMA 950 graphics
• 12.1" WXGA display
• Solid State hard drive up to 32GB or 1.8" 4200 RPM hard drive
• 4, 6 or 9-cell battery
• Intel 4965 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless
• Slots: PCMCIA Type II
• Ports: Serial docking connector, 3 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, headphone/speaker out, modem, ethernet, AC power, integrated microphone, FireWire, SD card slot

The Latitude D430 as seen on the Dell Taiwan site

So basically the processor gets upgraded from the existing Dell D420 that has a Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo), but no move to the new Intel Santa Rosa platform. This is quite odd seeing that Lenovo quickly moved its X-series ultraportable to Santa Rosa last month with the release of the ThinkPad X61 and HP will soon be releasing a Santa Rosa ultraportable in the form of the HP Compaq 2710p. Obviously Dell has bumped into some design issues that doesn't allow them to move the D430 to Santa Rosa or they simply decided customers don't care about having the latest Intel processor and integrated graphics platform on their business ultraportable. Whatever the case, my guess is that this move might turn off some buyers, but I've been known to be wrong.

The SSD drive option is of course a bonus, having the SSD drive will give you better battery life and faster hard drive performance. Since a regular drive for the D430 will be a 1.8" variety that spins at a max of 4200RPM the SSD will be a big performance improvement over other options.

Also new will be the option of the Intel 4965 wireless card that provides 802.11n wireless. You'll also have the option of integrated WWAN like you do with the D420. Other than that, unless there's something else being upgraded we don't see in the specs, everything remains the same. This is good since the Latitude D420 is a very solid offering, but a little dissapointing not to see at least a little more of a specs bump.