mediocre while it lasted.
Written: Jun 26 '07
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Pros: value for money,good linux compatibility, graphics card.
Cons: very cheaply built, problematic hardware, battery life bad, very hot!
The Bottom Line: not recommended for people with high blood pressure, or low tolerance for problems.
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| princessangry's Full Review: Dell Latitude™ C640 PC Notebook |
note: I will only write about my experince alone. the technical end of it has probably been explained elesewhere. it pretty much acted like any standard lappie (with comparable specs) for any tasks I would throw at it, not much worth noting there.
tech suppt. not applicable since refurb. only 30 day return policy.
first of all I bought this refurb, from tigerdirect.com and it seemed a good buy @ $750 inc. next bus. day shipping.
specs for my particular model:
1.85GHz P4M processor
512MB RAM
30GB (upgraded to 40 and faster speed drive)
CDRW-DVD-ROM dual drive.
32MB ATi Radeon graphics card (the main reason I chose this over lower priced lappies)
and the rest I dont care about.
it would perform tasks allright that I would throw at it and it did do ok for photoshopping, and games would run pretty good like warcraft3, simcity4, and port royale2, but I did have to turn the graphics setting down to get to work fast. simcity4 had the most trouble since it's very complicated and more of a RAM intensive game rather then graphics intensive. running internet and file management tasks was ok.
it ran linux very easily except the graphics card would not work with acceleration because ATI is not very good with linux support. nVidia is alot better but I could not find a lappie with nvidia for the price rage I could afford. the rest of teh hardware was pretty much plug-n-play with ubunu and debian linux. no real problems. and wireless worked out of the box as well! which is a real plus since most people who use linux have to do something with the wireless. Linux compatibility was the reason I chose this lappie over a couple others that were a slightly better value.
anyways the lappie was ok the first few weeks of use, then the problems started, the wireless card was very bad I would be 30 feet away from the wifi router and I would have low-no signal! I did have a spiral staircase that had metal on it, but when I did take it upstairs where the router was I still had bad signal on it I did a noise test and it was fine! I even switched router brands from linksys to netgear becuase my linksys router did have problems and kept going scenille on me and loosing its settings all the time. the netgear helped but not much. I couldn't afford an external card at the time so I was stuck with crappy wireless on the lappie.
the power cord is very badly designed and the end that goes into the lappie was deteriorating and it eventually did not make a good connection becuase the wires going into the connector were kinking and they were very frail and broke inside of it so I resoldered the wires in it and sealed it with electrical tape and it worked fine for a month, then I fixed it again and it worked for 2 months. they have a very bad design for that!
the battery life was terrible I only had an hour and a half tops and as the months went by it decreased to 15 minutes!
the next problem started more recently, the display backlight kept going out and being screwy and it eventually died. it drove me nuts! I eventually said screw it and started saving up for a new lappie.
I know one thing you can depend on dell for, good heaters! This lappie got really hot and it actually helped keep me nice and warm during the cold winter months.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 750
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 13 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
princessangry
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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