The 14-inch widescreen LED-backlit display is bright and crisp, with an unusually high resolution--1600 by 900--for its size. It's inset in a fairly wide bezel for added damage protection. The E5420's built-in speakers produce surprisingly robust audio, and although our test unit lacked a webcam, you can opt to configure the machine with one. However, while the laptop does have a built-in microphone, it offers no option to plug in separate headphone and microphone jacks--you get only a combined audio-mic port.

Our E5420 came with a somewhat small 250GB, 7200-rpm hard drive; other options include larger and encrypted drives, and smaller solid-state drives. You get the usual three USB 2.0 ports, one of which is a combined USB-eSATA port. The laptop also provides HDMI and VGA ports, gigabit ethernet, and a DVD burner.

Dell's software bundle for its business customers is minimal: You get the starter edition of Roxio Creator and CyberLink's PowerDVD for use with the DVD burner, as well as a couple of network-connection utilities (including the NetWaiting dial-up modem utility, which seems odd since this configuration had no dial-up modem) and Dell's backup, recovery, and data-protection tools.