Carla Thornton

Dell Latitude C600

Dell's Inspiron 4000, Inspiron 8000, and C-series Latitude notebooks now integrate wireless networking--a first for the company. The Pentium III-750/600-based Latitude C600 includes a TrueMobile wireless LAN mini-PCI card that connects to an antenna (which Dell has been building into the three notebook lines since last fall). Add an access point and you have 802.11b-compliant wireless local-area networking. Dell offers the $899 TrueMobile 1150 Wireless Access Point for the office and the $299 Wireless Network Hub for the home. In addition to hassle-free wireless networking, the handsome, lightweight C600 has features designed to appeal to companies whose employees share notebooks. It boasts an easy-to-remove hard drive, eraserhead and touchpad pointing devices, and an internal bay that can hold one of seven different devices. Dropping a dummy module into the bay cuts the notebook's weight to a svelte 5.5 pounds. Rear connections sport color icons that allow you to hook up peripherals quickly.
Unfortunately, you can't have built-in wireless networking and built-in standard networking, too. The TrueMobile wireless network interface mini-PCI card occupies the internal mini-PCI bay normally used by the combination modem and network adapter. To add standard connectivity, you'll have to add a PC Card, such as the Xircom RealPort modem/NIC combination that was bundled with our review unit. (You can also order your notebook with a modem/NIC mini-PCI card and add a TrueMobile PC Card for occasional wireless networking.) Dell's documentation could be better: The C600 ships with a thin printed manual, leaving you to fish for most information in a difficult-to-search HTML user's guide.
The C600 is a sedate-looking, dark-gray laptop with a keyboard that's designed well but is somewhat noisy. The single bay, located on the front, accommodates either the 10X-24X CD-ROM drive or the floppy drive you get for its as-tested price, or any one of five optional devices--an 8X DVD-ROM drive, an 8X/4X/24X CD-RW drive, a Zip drive, a second battery, or a second hard drive. You can use the floppy drive alongside other devices by attaching it to the parallel port with an included cable. Aside from an S-Video port, the C600 is short on multimedia features; its sound is only so-so and it has no extra audio buttons. The Latitude's PC WorldBench 2000 score of 164 is slightly above average for a Pentium III-750/600 notebook running Windows 2000.
The C600 offers almost everything a company would want in a portable, highly flexible business laptop: wireless networking, both eraserhead and touchpad pointing devices, and the ability to rotate a wide range of add-in devices, including a second battery. The $2486 price looks high for a Pentium III-750/600 laptop, but seems reasonable considering everything else you get.

Buying Information

Dell Latitude C600 PC WorldBench 2000 score of 164, Pentium III-750/600 CPU, 128MB of SDRAM, 256KB L2 cache, Windows 2000 Professional, 14.1-inch active-matrix screen, ATI Rage Mobility 128 graphics chip with 8MB of SGRAM, 10GB hard drive, 10X-24X CD-ROM drive, combination V.90 modem and ethernet PC Card, built-in network adapter, touchpad and eraserhead pointing devices, 7.8 pounds (including AC adapter and external floppy drive and cable). Three-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free tech support. $ 2486 PC WorldBench 2000 score of 164, Pentium III-750/600 CPU, 128MB of SDRAM, 256KB L2 cache, Windows 2000 Professional, 14.1-inch active-matrix screen, ATI Rage Mobility 128 graphics chip with 8MB of SGRAM, 10GB hard drive, 10X-24X CD-ROM drive, combination V.90 modem and ethernet PC Card, built-in network adapter, touchpad and eraserhead pointing devices, 7.8 pounds (including AC adapter and external floppy drive and cable). Three-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free tech support. 800/388-8542 http://www.dell.com