The Latitude C400 is Dell’s compromise between the X200 ultra small laptop and the rest of Dell’s laptop line. Coming in at a mere 3.6 pounds(with the 4-cell battery) and only 1 inch thick while closed, it is certainly easy to carry on the road.

Out of the box
When this laptop was first ordered, I did not realize how small it was going to be. Pulling it out of the box was a shock. It is VERY small and VERY light. For comparison, the Inspiron 8200(7.64 pounds) weighs more than double the C400. I noticed quickly that there was only one USB and no parallel. I do not suggest using Windows NT on this laptop for that reason. One nice touch is the inclusion of a serial port, which we still use. The case is attractive and is magnesium alloy, making this one tough portable.

Like most Dell laptops, the C400 comes with both the touch pad and the eraser nub for mouse.

The keyboard is small at best and those of us with “fat fingers” will curse the C400’s keyboard. The keys are much smaller than a normal keyboard, but that is the price of portability.

First boot up
Booting up the C400 was a surprise. Once running through the initial service tag screens, I promptly had Windows 2000 fail. It would go into an infinite reboot loop. I could boot into safe mode just fine and finally ran a debug on the minidumps and came up with a problem in the srv.sys. I ended up rebuilding Windows 2000 and everything works fine now. This was the first time in the 200+ Dells I have configured that this issue has occurred.

Performance
The laptop came with a 1.2GHZ Pentium III and 512 MB of RAM which leads to a good performance showing. DVDs play flawlessly unless you run programs in the background. Heat does not seem to be as bad as some previous Dell laptops, even with the 1.2GHZ CPU. This is due to Speedstep, which throttles the CPU down when disconnected from AC power and when not in heavy use. From the documents I have read on Intel the Pentium III throttles down to 800MHZ from 1.2GHZ when on battery power. This adds to it’s battery power, a whopping 5 hours with the optional 6-cell battery.

Sound quality is less than average, like most laptops. You cannot expect theatre sound from such a small speaker. Sound distorts at higher volumes. I do not suggest watching DVDs with these speakers. Get some Harmon Kardon speakers and hook them up.

Video is output by an Intel 830M graphics card that is definitely adequate, but not spectacular. I did not try any graphics intensive programs but I do notice a quick blackout on login. It lasts about 1.2 a second but it is annoying to have the screen disappear for a moment. The video card does share RAM with the system, so beware. Video is output to a 12.1 screen which is vibrant, but a little on the small side.

This laptop supports either one type one or one type two cards, which is acceptable. Given that you can get both a NIC and modem. Keep in mind that there is no internal bay for floppy or CDROM. There is an external connector on the left side of the laptop along with the USB port, an annoyance for we left-handed people. Using a normal mouse and the external port was impossible without bumping, for me at least.

We chose the CDRW/DVD combo which is a nice feature when you do not want to have to switch between DVD and CDRW. The burner is rated at 8x write 8x rewrite, meaning 10 minutes or less to burn a 700MB CD including lead-in time.

Upgradability
The hard drive and RAM are easily accessible by removing some screws. The battery is right along the front bottom section with the LEDs, which represent battery power easily viewed without removing it (a positive). The C400 can support up to 1GB of RAM which is more than enough for today’s computing.

All in all, the C400 should be considered if you need a versatile yet light weight laptop with a touch of flash


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 2900
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 12
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20