As rugged as a Lada
Written: Apr 25 '01 (Updated Apr 26 '01)
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Pros: Speed, Power Use
Cons: Flimsy, heavy, win2k incompatible docking station, bad support, touchpad randomly clicks
The Bottom Line: This laptop is extremely flimsy, which defeats the point of having a laptop. It has not stood up to even moderate use for one year.
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| isewell's Full Review: Dell Latitude CPx |
I've used this as my business laptop for about a year. I haven't treated it roughly - it's mostly stayed in the same place. Still, the thing is falling apart and I'm just counting the seconds till it won't boot up. The PC itself is fairly quick, but why pay money for a laptop that's so flimsy?
In this review I will talk about the laptop's speed, noise, wear and tear, peripherals, the docking station and other general stuff.
Please keep in mind that this is not my main computer. Thus, when there was problems configuring things, or other faults, I have a tendency to let them slide and just complain about them on epinions, instead of trying to fix the root problem.
SPEED
I believe this is the laptop's biggest strength. It rocks. Even with all the default settings, I'm very happy with the performance when running multiple applications, games, etc. I have run some number-crunching video app's with it, and never ran into problems. But of course, with a Pentium 3 and 256M RAM, it should rock!
NOISE
For the first month or two it was great. Then, I noticed the fan seemed to change pitch without any reason. I thought it was on it's way out, but it's been fine since then. I can't explain it. The HD is fairly quiet, and the cdrom isn't.
WEAR AND TEAR
This is the biggest negative. I feel it's falling apart. There's a few joins in the plastic which seem incredibly weak, and whenever I pick it up I can see them bending. A few months ago, my "Page up" keep stopped working reliably. If I slightly twist the keyboard, it starts working again.
I have owned a Thinkpad before this, and never had any of the same problems, despite having used it much more roughly. (my wife even had schoolchildren bashing on it, without any problems!)
PERIPHERALS
Input:
I use the touchpad as a mouse device. Again, it was great at the beginning. After a few months of usage however, I noticed it took on a mind of its own. I'll be happily typing a document somewhere, and then zap, the touchpad (I believe, or the purple stick) would be suddenly clicking the start menu and I'd lose my train of thought while I went back and selected the Word window again. It's unbelievably annoying. And since I'm using the touchpad, I can't disable it.
The keyboard has a very light feel to it. No problems, except for the page up key mentioned above.
When I try to "hot switch" or "hot insert" devices into the bay, Win 2k would sometimes get upset and not recognize the CDROM. Even if I took out the device and re-inserted it, it doesn't always recognize it. A reboot is often needed.
Output:
No problems with the disk drive (either attached or in the bay).
Getting the TV Out to work was not simple. With the right driver file, I finally got it weorking. The intructions on how to use it are poor however, and the CRT key that I should be able to use to switch between TV and normal display doesn't reliably work.
The LCD isn't that good - not as good as the much older Thinkpad (486 model!). It can not be viewed from an angle.
The speakers are poor - when listening to a newscast, I often can't make it out. The combination of bad streaming quality and bad speakers often make even spoken word incomprehensible.
DOCKING STATION
I gave up on it. Every time the laptop went to sleep while docked, it would never wake up. Even the power button didnt reboot it. I had to remove the laptop from the docking station, and pop the battery out. This happens in Win 2000. I applied all the patches to the BIOS and to the OS. No luck. No support from the Dell site. In general, waking it up is always painful, as it takes 10 seconds and much cajoling to turn back on.
OTHER
- The BIOS/setup menu does not work in Win 2k. In fact, none of the purple buttons do, excpet "suspend" (and even that one's not reliable!).
- I've used the card for Firewire/video editting without any problems.
- The printing on the keys of the laptop are wearing off. It's not an issue since I touchtype, but is further evidence of shoddy quality at Dell.
- The POWER button is pretty useless. I can never get it to do what I want it to do. Very often, when the thing crashes, it's time to pull both the batteries.
- The DELL support web site is terrible. I can browse through a list of updates for my model, but I'm basically looking at not more than just filenames. What the update actually does is anyone's guess!
- This thing is HEAVY to the point of being unwieldy.
- It is a power miser. With two batteries, I never ran out of juice.
This was my first experience with a DELL laptop, and it'll be my last. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for this experience.
Thanks for reading. Please take a moment to check out my other reviews, or leave a comment on this review. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 3000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 601-700
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
isewell
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Member: Ian Sewell
Location: Santa Rosa
Reviews written: 57
Trusted by: 19 members
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