Dell Engineers got his own desk (Dell Latitude CPtS)

Member Name: trixiemagic

Product:	Dell Latitude CPtS
Date:	27/03/01 (1069 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Support

Disadvantages: Bad Reliability

Over the last 3 years I have nursed a cycle of 1500 latitudes, from some of the oldest to some of the latest models. To be honest I am still not sure if they are a good buy.

Speed and performance is as would be expected, and governed by what you put in it. If you buy the CPt then you must expect to see a few less go faster stripes compared with the CPI models mostly caused by the Celoron processor (well you get what you pay for.

I could go into each feature, but feel it pointless as they have a good website and all the little bits (when working) perform well.

From my experience the most important purchase with a dell laptop is the support package, for good and bad reasons.

BAD

The laptops are not what I would call reliable. In fact I will just list the problems I have had some of these in very high numbers.

Faulty: Hard Drives, System Boards, Displays, Keyboards, PCMCIA slots, Battery’s, Memory, Diskette/CD-ROM drives, Loose Processors. Clip that holds the lid shut.

It maybe its a little unfair as I have seen allot of these laptops and at our company they are used as laptops i.e. the users take them out of the office more than once a month. However, lets just say the local dell engineer almost has his own desk.


GOOD

With all them problems what could be good? Well, when they are working they are great and when they are not, the support is great. Each laptop has next day onsite support for 3 years. I cannot fault Dell once on this, every time there has been a problem an engineer or spare part is onsite the next day. Their helpline is excellent (can be a pain when you already know what is wrong because you have seen it before). Their website is always up to date with the latest drivers, and has a clever tool which can take you direct to the downloads relevant to your system.

I think the CPx series is a just favourable balance between good support and good reliabili
ty.

Summary: