CPx, a lot of problems in 2 years time
Written: Mar 14 '03
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Pros: Good value for money as a second-hand laptop
Cons: Quite big and heavy, a lot of problems after a couple of years
The Bottom Line: Maybe it was a good option two years ago, but don't buy it now only if it's very cheap!
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| adicos's Full Review: Dell Latitude CPx |
Hello all,
Continuing my reviews about Dell laptops, I’ve decided to write one about Latitude CPx. A laptop which looks at first glance quite powerful. It is a little bit old, but you might think there is a good value for money as a second-hand. It is a little big, about 3kg, but you get a 14” TFT screen
Well, I’ll start showing you some facts about the laptop and then I’ll tell about the bad things about this particular model.
The laptop comes with a Pentium III at 650 or 750 MHz, with 12GB
hard-disk or 20 GB hard-disk and 128 MB RAM (but I’ve seen a lot of laptops with 256 MB RAM, which is definitively more suitable for nowadays software requirements.
What else can you get:
- Parallel port
- Serial port
- VGA output (to connect to an external monitor)
- USB port
- Network/modem cards bay
- Mouse/Keyboard port
As operating systems, I’ve seen Windows 98, Windows NT (which I do not recommend to install on a laptop, as is not plug&play, which is quite important for a mobile user and you can’t use your USB port – that’s life, NT does not support USB) and Windows 2000. It works best with Windows2000, definitively, so go for it (or even Windows XP, but the processor is not quite as powerful as you need to feel the XP )
Now about the problems with this laptop, which, unfortunately, are quite a few:
- After 18-24 months most of the keyboards fail. Either you can’t use the left part of the keyboard, or some specific keys, such 7,8,9,U,I,O,J,K,L,N,M. This is a known problem with these CPX keyboards and I’ve called Dell Support for 5 times in the last 6 months to replace keyboards (that’s it, it’s like after 2 years all the keyboards were going crazy !!).
- The fan is overheating and you may get a sudden shut down in the middle of doing something (and if you have Windows 98 and write something in Word, for instance, you might even lost your work, as some files become corrupted after such a “sudden death”)
- The touch pad might fall apart. I’ve seen that at two CPx in the company
If you are quite lucky, you might not get these problems, but I’d definitively not buy this Dell model knowing you can get them.
Apart from all these problems, the laptop is working fine, you get the necessary amount of power and speed to deal with what software are you using.
It’s also a good value for money as a second hand laptop, as I’ve said, but beware of all the above problems !
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): N/A
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
adicos
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Location: London - UK
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
IT Engineer in London.
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