The man on the move. The C810 LS (Dell Latitude LS)

Member Name: andycharger

Product:	Dell Latitude LS
Date:	15/01/02 (2017 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great performance

Disadvantages: Heavy, Not very robust

When travelling abroad as I like to do, I have to take my laptop with me. Sure I have all I need on our network at work and I can access it from the offices in Detroit and Cologne (guess what business our Web design company works for?) but It is so much easier to carry your files and work station around with you when away from the main office.
Working for my company means you have to use the office standard when ordering PC's and laptops. This means ordering a Dell.
I love Dell. Viglen and Dell are my 2 favourite makes and when it comes to Laptops, I will take my old Latitude any day of the week.
I say old because they are an old range. You may pick them up second hand bargains which have been well looked after but new ones will cost the earth..
Mine is the C810 which packs a punchy if somewhat outdated Pentium 3 1.13Ghz chip and up to 512Mb of ram. This is considered huge and groundbreaking on its release and reflected in its £2,100 price tag! In fact it rivals most desktop PC's. Mine has 256Mb of ram and runs fine. I also run the Windows 2000 Operating system which has proved twitchy on some older laptops.
As for storage, I cant believe that mine comes with a 40Gb Hard drive! Hard to believe that Laptops can carry so much power today. I remeber when you had to stick in a poxy flash card to boost the storage or a PCMIA card.
As for Networking, mine comes with dual options. There is a built in Ethernet 10/100 Network port so I can plug straight into my network on my travels and a removable Modem card. This fits easily into the expansion port.
As for extras, well, you have the option of having the CD Rom or FLoppy Drive in at any one time. Only room for one or the other which can become annoying.
Audio is catered for with onboard sound and the in build speaker is very impressive.
Visual Screen is always important in laptops and this one packs a 16.1 inch visible screen! 16.1 inches of it. Thats better than most 17
inch home monitors being a TFT flat screen.
Now for the bad points....
Its very heavy carrying around all of that performance. even the unit itself weighs a ton. Add to that the power leads, changeable drives and other peripherals and its starts weighing my shoulder bag down.
Secondly are the catches on the top of the laptop screen. They are to hold the screen shut in transit but the slide catches on the Laptop are easily broken. I know. I have broken mine. They are not very robust.
Thirdly is the price. Expect to pay a bit more being Dell. They are good hardware wise but a bit to expensive for the average user.
Thankfully my boss bought mine.
8 out of 10 for Dell.

Summary: