Those Dell D series latitudes were ahead of their time in build quality. Especially when compared to what came later.
And you could upgrade them too. Back when socketed CPUs existed on laptops along with expansion slots, and batteries were removable with a thumb latch (and most laptops could run on the power adapter without the battery being installed, which prevented trickle charging related battery degradation, perfect for a “desktop replacement” that would spend a lot of its time hooked up to power before that category of laptops even really existed). Good times.
They even had a super compact version. Something like a d400. Was awesome for datacenter/console work. Had a serial port, vga and was like 12.3 inches and only a few pounds despite being stout.
I think I used a d6xx for a while longer than I should have just because of that serial port and how bad usb to serial adapters were back then.
Unfortunately the d420 had a slower processor and would struggle as a desktop replacement.
