Apr 26, 2005
Praises for Dell Latitudes
I often get questions about what PC notebooks people should get, and I ask them what they expect to do with the computer and then form my recommendation on that. Overall, my personal favorite PC notebooks have for many, many years been Dell Latitudes. The Latitude-line is Dell’s business line of notebooks, and although they share much with some Inspiron models, they are in my view, clearly superior. You don’t buy a Latitude to play games, or even to get a high-spec notebook. Instead, you buy it for reliability, dependability, serviceability, and affordability. You can get a Latitude Pentium III notebook for around $300-500 and it will be more than enough to do regular computer things like word processing, presentations, web, email etc. My Latitude C610 (1.2GHz, 256/30, CD-ROM, AC-adapter) cost me $369 on eBay. I added 2×512Mb RAM (2x$80), a DVD-ROM drive ($61), extra battery (four for $25), Intel BG200 mini-PCI wifi $30, an AC-adapter ($10), and a docking station ($25), and I had a complete system. Here are some of my main reasons for liking the Latitudes so much:
Durable: I’ve used many PC notebooks over the years, and I’ve yet to come across any as durable as the Latitudes, and that includes Apple Powerbooks. Sure they suffer the usual cracks, nicks, scratches, etc. but they keep together and they keep on working. Seems to me, only Apple iBooks and IBM ThinkPads can compete with Latitudes in terms of durability.
Modularity: They have two modular bays in which you can stick optical drives, floppy drives, and batteries (in the left bay you can only stick a batter). You can also put in a light-weight travel module to keep the weight down. I typically keep two batteries in my Latitude which gives me up to six hours of running time without charging. Even the hard drives are modular and all you need is a little hard drive kit and by just removing one screw you can switch hard drive. Many other notebooks you have to take it apart completely to be able to switch hard drives. I installed Linux on the 30Gb drive and keep Windows 2000 on my main 60Gb drive.
Easy to repair: The Latitudes are easy to open and fix since the screws are identified on the bottom, and Dell provides service documents on their web site. What about spare parts? Well, eBay is full of thousands of spare parts – pretty much anything you might be looking for.
Docking stations: Many other makers of notebooks provide docking stations but the ones for Latitudes are the best in my experience and they are available for next to nothing on eBay. Make sure you get one with a monitor stand to save desktop space.