A year in a love/hate relationship
Written: Mar 15 '01
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Pros: Somewhat fast and never crashes.
Cons: Mediocre battery life, bad pointing stick buttons, get's very hot, not durable and HEAVY.
The Bottom Line: Not bad, not good. Look for something lighter, sexier, and more durable. Battery life, weight, durability of the keyboard, one swappable bay, I know there are better laptops out there.
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| beamz's Full Review: Dell Latitude CPx H500GT |
Let me start off by saying this is one of the first laptops I've used for serious IT work. It goes home with me everyday, hops on planes, goes to other countries but it shows it's durability over time. I store it in a bag with adequate padding so it doesn't get thrown or abused but it does get put through it's paces.
About the Pros:
It's got good speed, but it helps if you have over 256mb of memory (of course depending on what you're doing). Modular bay is pretty useful.
Daily use in a dock is great. Support under Windows NT is good as well as under 2000. I also use it primarily under linux which has great support for the hardware and I do use it to it's potential. I also happened to be lucky and got a display with no bad pixels.
About the Cons:
I've had 2 keyboards replaced because the mouse button that the pointing stick device uses broke off. I've gone through 1 battery in 6 months (luckily under warranty). I've gone through one cdrom drive as well.
The entire keyboard needs replacing if any part of the stick pointer, trackpad or mouse buttons breaks. They're cheaply held into place with little plastic tabs and the latest incarnation of the keyboard I got makes this nice little squeak when you press on the mouse buttons.
The battery died last week of unknown causes. I usually go through about 2-3 cycles of plugging and unplugging into a dock or ac/adapter.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 3200
Operating System: Linux
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 501-600
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
beamz
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Location: Indianapolis, IN
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Application Developer/Sysadmin with a strong affection for technology and culture.
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