Dell Latitude CPi

Dell Latitude CPi

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mike_chimirev
Epinions.com ID: mike_chimirev
Member: Mike Chimirev
Location: Staten Island, New York, USA
Reviews written: 27
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A little heavy, but very comfortable to use.

Written: Aug 01 '01
  • User Rating: Excellent
  • Ease of Use:
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Pros:Very comfortable when sitting on the desk.
Cons:Not something you want to park on your lap.
The Bottom Line: Very comfortable and easy to use when sittig on the desk, but not something you'd wanna park on your lap.

I got this laptop from my company to dailin remotely.
My experience with laptops before this one is a little sony Vaio that i bought from my

friend a while ago. Comparing to Vaio it is bigger, heavier, but also has more stuff in it.

Comparint to my Vaio it's bigger, heavier, but has a full size keyboard and a pretty large

and very clear display.

Here's the specs, which you can get from the Dell web site.

266 MHz Intel Pentium II
440BX Chipset, 66 MHz FSB
64 MB EDO-DRAM
4.3 GB HDD
2 MB NeoMagic Video, Crystal Sound System
13.3" TFT with output
1 USB port
Printer and docking ports
Mouse port
Touch Pad
2 PCMCIA slots
I have windows NT 4.0 on it, but i think Dell installs Win98 or WinME on it.

Docking Ports:
There's 2 docking ports - one for the battery, another one for the battery, floppy, or

CDRom. Everything is very easily swapable. You do have to restart computer though if you

want to go from floppy to CDRom. There's also a cable to connect floppy/CDRom to the

parallel port, so you can have both at the same time - one internal and one external.
There's also a thing size of a floppy drive that you can plug into the port, it doesn't do

anything, just covers the port and weights less then floppy/cdrom.

Keyboard:
Very, very comfortable - it's full size, buttons go in about 1/3 as deep as they do on a

desktop keyboard, but that's great for the laptop. I type almost as fast on this keyboard

as I do on my Microsoft split keyboard.

Glidepad:
Great piece - it's got little tiny grinds on it (smaller then what i've seen on other

laptops) so you can literally "glide" on it. Buttons next to it are very easy to press, but

they're pretty low comparing to the keyboard, so you wouldn't press them when typing.

Mouse/Keyboard port:
There's also a port in the back that can be used for a mouse or for the keyboard and it

works kindof weired: once you plug in the mouse - glidepad is disabled and mouse is enabled,

but if you want to go back to glidepad you have to restart the computer. Or plug the

keyboard into the port. Once the external keyboard is plugged in the glidepad starts

working again.
With the keyboard it works a little better: when keyboard is plugged in you can use both

keyboard on the laptop and the external at the same time. Also by plugging in external

keyboard you can solve the little mouse situation you have that i described above.
Overall this port is very very convenient, the only thing you cannot do is plug in the mouse

for a few minutes and then go back to glidepad, everythig else is kindof universal on it.

Defects
I haven't ran into any defects on it at all in 2 months that i've been using it. It never

froze (I'm running WinNT 4.0), it always recognizes the PC cards (I have a modem and a

network card in it) and it works fine with my printer, other computer on the network, etc...

Battery
Battery runs for 4 hours, and there's an option to put a second battery in the bay. I

haven't tried running it with the second battery, but first one actually does last for about

four hours.

Ports
There's a mouse/keyboard port in the back (which I described), monitor port, serial port,

parallel port, docking port and USB port. I haven't used the USB because NT does not

support USB, but that's a great accessory on the laptop (if you want to use external mouse

and the keyboard for example).

Overall
Great Laptop, not less convenient to use then a desktop. Very heavy - I don't think too meny people would actually be comfortable sitting with this thing on the lap. But that's my oppinion, and I'm used to my 12" screen Vaio that's smaller then anything else on the market.

I don't know how much this piece was bought for, but at this given time I wouldn't pay more then $500 for it. It's a little outdated but still does everything I need it to do.

One more thing
Don't look at the price I put down - as I said I didn't pay for it - my company gave it to me.

Recommended: Yes


Amount Paid (US$): 1000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium II
Processor speed: 201-300
Screen Size: 13
RAM: 64
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): Under 4

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