It was quite difficult to choose between the E4200 and E4300.

My instinct said the E4200 but my wallet said the E4300. However when it comes to investing in my own business tools I trust my instinct over my wallet.

As I recommend equipment to clients it’s important that I am confident in my recommendations and if I am going to recommend the E4200 to other people the best way to do that with confidence is to actually own one.

The key area of contention was the cost implication of going high performance SSD on the E4200.

I decided to get off the fence on SSD Technology and I elected for the higher performing 64gb model over the higher capacity less expensive 128gb.

To ease that pain I have a ton of external storage options. 32gb USB Keys,  external host powered 320gb Hard Disks and of course the Internet. So I can live with relatively low capacity of 64gb but benefit from higher performance.

As the CPU, Bus Speed and Cache are all low power I am hoping that the high performance SSD will balance things out and I can have the best of both worlds small form factor and fast performance.

So far so good, so I placed the order but the delivery date is 22nd October ish. So about 5 weeks from now. I wish Dell would sell things they can ship within a reasonable time frame (a week for example).

I do have some hope that the E4200 is going to be a "great little machine". but the decision between the E4200 and E4300 wasn’t easy.

If you want to read my future coverage of the Dell Latitude E4200 bookmark this (link)

Now that these new business laptops are available to order from Dell’s Web site choosing between these two models isn’t as easy as it would appear.

Form Factor:

The E4200 comes with a 12.1 inch screen running at 1280×800.

The E4300 comes with a 13.3 inch screen running at 1280×800.

So the only difference is the actual size of the form factor as the screen runs at the same resolution.

CPU:

The E4200 comes with the latest ultra low voltage SU9300 1.2Ghz or SU9400 1.4Ghz running on a 800mhz bus with 3mb of cache

The E4300 comes with the SP9300 2.26Ghz or SP9400 2.40Ghz running on a 1066mhz bus with 6mb of cache.

It would appear that the E4300 wins hands down in this category with Faster CPU, Bus Speed and bigger Cache.

Hard Disk:

The E4200 is only configurable with an  SSD hard disk at 32gb, 64gb and 128gb.

The E4300 is only configurable with traditional ATA/SATA hard disks with capacities of 80gb to 250gb

So if you want SSD you have to go E4200 if you want larger capacity then E4300.

Cost:

The entry level cost of the E4200 is £899 ex VAT and shipping

The entry level cost of the E4300 is £699 ex VAT and shipping.

The killer problem for the E4200 is the inclusion of SSD technology as this instantly adds £346 to go from 32gb to 128gb.

As you can see on the picture above it is cheaper to go for the 128gb SSD drive than the 64gb version. It appears the 64gb model may be a higher performance model than the 128gb which may explain the price difference.

I configured my ideal specification for each machine:-

The E4200 the cost was £1317 + VAT and Shipping.

The E4300 the cost was £888 + VAT and Shipping.

A difference of £429. The majority of which is the SSD hard disk in the E4200.

It is somewhat annoying at not being able to configure the E4200 with anything other than SSD.

I shall have a good hard think about this before deciding.

E4200 Link: Dell Latitude E4200

E4300 Link: Dell Latitude E4300