Dellegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Dell Latitude CPtS)

Member Name: ahenry

Product:	Dell Latitude CPtS
Date:	18/06/01 (994 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good at most things

Disadvantages: Poor docking station design

I recently was bought a new laptop by my employer. Its a Dell Lattitude CPx750GT, together with a 17" flat panel monitor and a docking station. The CPU is 750MHz and theres 256Mb of RAM, so its reasonably quick and came with Windows 2000. I don't use it to play games, although I do thrash it a bit with computational stuff for my work. When it is being thrashed, Windows 2000 handles things a lot more gracefully than Windows 98.
It came with a Xircom combo network and modem card. The modem on this was dead on arrival, so I've kept the modem card from my old PC.
I have another big computer monitor on my desk, so originally I was just going to use the laptop screen and keyboard all the time. Health and Safety concerns meant that I had to use an external monitor to get it to the right viewing height. Initially I still used the laptop keyboard when the machine was fitted into a docking station. The problem with this is that the Dell docking station has the world's most stupidly located on/off switch - just in the right place to get leant on with your elbow. This isn't a switch that you can configure to politely ask you if you want to shutdown. It just does it there and then.
I've now got a 17" flat panel monitor as well. This is nice as it means you get 1280 x 1024 resolution as well as being able to have 30cm of free desk space in front of the keyboard. The switching between 1280x1024 on the external monitor and 1024x768 on the laptop screen is reasonably painless. If you eject the PC from the docking station when the external monitor is on and disconnect the monitor, then the machine comes back on the internal screen at 1024x768. Plug it back into the docking station and it comes back at 1024x768, which looks very fuzzy. You then have to manually set it back to 1280x1024.
In theory, you can unplug the CD or floppy drive whilst the machine is switched on, so long as you stop communications with it first. This doesn't w
ork with the docking station as that obstructs access to the catch you need to flick.
As for value for money, then this system isn't very good at all. The docking station and flat panel monitor alone are about £1100-1200 +VAT and the whole system cost about £3000. I wouldn't pay that if it was my money, but it wasn't!

Summary: