Good like that last piece of cake
Written: Dec 07 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Quality of Tech Support: |
|
|
|
Pros: Great performance, keyboard, screen. Quiet. Great service and support.
Cons: Expensive. Lack of ports.
The Bottom Line: Buy it. The best compliment you can give it is "boring," because it will just work and work and work and work. Plus, it's not fat or ugly.
|
|
|
| d-rock's Full Review: Dell Latitude C600 (220-6670) PC Notebook |
I consider myself somewhat of a nerd. So when my beloved computer was stolen in September, I had to find its perfect replacement. (note: that computer was also a Dell, so my search was somewhat biased.)
Here's what I was looking for, and you can compare this with what you're looking for. The key characteristics were:
- At least a 14.1" sxga screen, because I work with graphics and web design.
- Something that wasn't fat. I hate big computers. I needed something that wouldn't give me a hernea whenever I went to take it out to watch a movie or play a game on a plane flight.
- A proven brand name that I could trust to have good service.
- Something that wasn't ugly. I'm a fashion-conscious nerd.
What I narrowed my search down to was this computer and the Sony VAIO GR-series. And though the VAIO was quite nice to look at, and had a trusted brand name, it was really expensive. To get similar specs with the 3-year warranty, it cost a couple hundred dollars more.
So you're saying, "Get on with it. You're boring me. I need to feed my cat."
Well, when I received the computer, I just set it up and let it go to work. And I must say, it was a fantastically dull experience. Nothing went wrong, no ominous screens popped up, no audible fan noise could be heard, the integrated network card detected my LAN connection immediately, and my immediately downloaded mp3s sounded great.
The screen is crisp and bright. It's SXGA, so I use it at a resolution of 1400x1050, and at that resolution, everything is crisp. Movies, graphics, and websites look great, and you can see a whole lot of stuff at once. It isn't for the faint of eyes though. Things get pretty tiny once you get up that high.
I feel that one of the most important things to the computer is how you interact with it. I returned a previous laptop because I didn't like where the control key was. This keyboard is awesome. The keys are big, widely spaced, and doesn't make loud clicking noises. The touchpad works great, and if you can't use those, it comes with an eraser-head pointer too, complete with its own set of buttons. My main gripe, however, is that you have to push the buttons pretty hard to click, and they make a loud noise when you do.
My other main gripe is the lack of ports. Though it comes with all the standard ports (modem, ethernet, 2 PCI-card slots, parallel, and serial), it only comes with one USB port, one slot for either your keyboard or mouse, and no firewire. In a practical sense, this isn't a big deal, because I don't have enough stuff to plug in to the omitted ports, but for those of you who like to connect all 3 of your digital cameras at once, you're in trouble.
The performance is top-notch, even when I'm running Internet Explorer, Winamp, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver all at the same time. But it better be when I have 1.2 GHz Pentium III with 256 MB of RAM.
It was much lighter when I picked it up then I expected. With a CD-ROM drive installed, it probably weighs around 6 pounds - really light for the full-featured computer that it is. The battery lasts a touch over 3 hours, though my roommate has the same computer, and I've seen it run for 5 hours on the same battery as mine. Different components may affect run-time.
I was also pleased with the aesthetics of this computer. Though it would get laughed at at an Apple and Sony laptop party, it has really clean lines and curves, and when you're working on it, it just feels solid.
The main problem with it was the amount of money i had to make my mom pay to buy it. A similarly configured Inspiron 4100 (which may look the same in photos, but feels and looks like crap in comparison to the Latitude) cost about $500 less even though I got an educational discount on the purchase, so if you're buying for your business, it would probably cost more. But like I said, the main competition - the VAIO - cost even more, so I was happy with what I got for the price I paid. Plus, I know that if ANYTHING goes wrong with my computer for the next 3 years, Dell will happily fix it for free.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2100
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
d-rock
|
|
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.