Dell Vostro 15 7000 vs Latitude 3510

[ali.makhmali]

Hi all, I am going to purchase a new laptop and need your opinion on this to help me decide.



My work will be mainly software development, compiling and running software, mainly .NET, html, javascript, Angular and etc, server and client, i.e. back end and front end development. And running some local SQL servers as well.



I am down to Latitude 3510, CPU i7-10510U (4 core 8 threads), and Vostro 15 7000 CPU (6 cores 12 threads).



All other specs are almost the same, 512GB SSD same class, 16GB DDR4 Ram, just the Vostro has NVidia as well, Latitude has integrated. That's not an issue because there would be no gaming and no video editing and probably no watching movies as well.



The tricky part is that (I've heard and never owned a dell) Latitude is business class, robust and durable, and Vostro is a variation of Inspiron which is a normal consumer class; but in this case with a higher number of cores.



Would I really need that? Does it really make any significant difference for me?



https://www.dell.com/en-nz/work/shop/business-laptop-notebook-computers/latitude-3510-laptop/spd/latitude-15-3510-laptop/on3510l01nz



https://www.dell.com/en-nz/work/shop/business-laptop-notebook-computers/vostro-15-7000-laptop/spd/vostro-15-7500-laptop/c9wnv7500c05nz



Any opinion is appreciated.



Thanks.

[cuttingedgecs]

"Business class" doesn't normally mean more robust construction. It can quite often just mean wide scale deployment and management features like vPro, PXE boot, responds to asset discovery tools, a BIOS that can be configured and locked down via an executable (deployed via SCCM), and the option to have Windows Pro or Enterprise preloaded. Some times a "business" model is the only way you can get a Xeon or ECC memory or a serial port or a Quadro video card. These are often not even an option in a "home" model even if they could be. If none of those matter to you, and you don't need some sort of fancy warranty/support option like 4 hour response, then Vostro/Inspiron/Latitude are just lables. Pick whichever one gives you the features you want for the best price.

[shrad]

I can give you an educated piece of information as I'm in the business too

Business class versus consumer grade will not make a great difference at the top of the cost level, so if this is for business you will recover it from the same fiscal arrangements and it will not be very important if you choose from the good ones

Dell is very good at providing robust models, as HP or Lenovo are, but they all have their good and bad models... only the reviews will tell you, not necessarily from the model itself but also from past models from the same series or same construction materials.

The main difference between business and consumer grade is the software stack and OS version, usually consumer grade is filled with adware and commercial software, sometimes even to the drivers level

Regarding .net dev, I can tell you cores and threads will make a difference with huge projects, but usually it means the project itself may be poorly designed and it is a totally different story

Anything in the CPU range of the i7 will be plenty enough as far as CPU goes, the most important things are at least 4c/8t, fast SSD and fast RAM

Don't underestimate the fully fledged video chip, as there are still cases where it will give you some use cases when you want to do a bit of autocad or blender, or even if you have to do some work on machine learning like ML.net and the like (plus it will still offload the CPU a bit)

I would also put a priority on screen quality and resolution, as well as keyboard and pad, ports (you don't want to carry a usb hub whenever you do a business presentation or the like...) because you will spend hours staring at lines of codes and not do a bit of occasional browsing and gaming

If you want some comparison I have an HP for work which is an i5 with 8Gb and ssd, I don't develop on it but on a VM that has greater multithreading capacities and that makes the difference (but I loose on their crude SAN that is slower than a SSD)

[Wasmachineman_NL]

Latitudes/ThinkPads/EliteBooks > consumer shit any day. Period. The better warranty on business laptops is a massive upside on it's own.

[shrad]

Those models also exist in business contracts and will just have their warranty and software image different, it all depends on what you want, and if you are not doing extreme work and would need a ruggedized model they will usually be great

The big think to check is reviews and even better, buying through a business contractor which will propose the good models already

[svmlegacy]

I'd avoid the U-class CPU's as they are more for 'bursty' loads than long compile times.you'll see more consistent performance from higher power (literally) CPU's.

[shrad]

From 10 years of experience with visual studio, compile time is not the main experience issue, it is autocomplete refresh time, code highlight refresh time, codemap refresh time and visual studio plugin execution time. All are background tasks handling large chunks of linked data, so iterating collections and applying recursive algorithms is the main task that occurs in real time

The latest versions really show some marvelous features especially with Resharper and the like, but will suffer from poor multithreading support and slow disk, so this is the major point of attention that you must have

[Joel S]

Our company has always ordered Latitudes, and I bucked the trend wand went for the Vostro. One its $600 cheaper and better specs than the Latitude. I have had it almost a year, and now everyone else in IT has Vostros. It is well built and I beat my laptop up carrying it everywhere. No issues, and I have a 10 key, and being a network guy this is a huge plus. Don't let the nea sayers put you off, save the cash and get twice the laptop!