The new DellLatitude E4200 may look like a portable DVD player, but it’s actually a full-blown PC. These tiny little machines push the brand to a solid state and I think it’s built to complement the MacBook line of similar computers. Unfortunately, this Dell costs more and has less features than the Apple, plus it seems a little on the slick side.
As of this writing, Dell is making this PC available with either Vista or XP, which is very cool. It comes standard with 2 gigs of RAM, but you can bump it up to 3 gigs for an extra $50. I am very glad to see that Dell is not picking up the memorial since it is so cheap these days. Processor options are limited to either a 1.2 or 1.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ULV, but there’s plenty of power for basic work or word processing. Don’t buy this device expecting to have a portable game unless it’s old stuff.
I am not very impressed by the 12.1 display on this PC size. First of all, it has a blue color that I couldn’t get away from. The screen itself is quite sharp and bright, though. Dell didn’t bother to move the hole down to the screen, which I think is a bad idea and will invite frustration later. When you open and close the lid, you can feel it twist and bend, and sometimes the LCD display shows a pulsating color effect as you press on the screen. The whole thing seems too pointless.
Because of its small size, there is no internal CD/DVD drive built into this PC. Instead, it comes with an external drive that connects via the eSATA port on the side. While Dell was nice enough to include this with the PC, the lack of an internal drive greatly reduces portability when you want to watch movies on this computer I suppose you could fix some Velcros to make the push stick on the back of the monitor, but that seems pretty stupid. The built-in speakers on this thing sound like crap, so you’ll want to use headphones for music or movies , anyway.
The two things that really impressed me about this computer were the hard drive and the keyboard. The hard drive is a solid state, like a flash drive, and comes in 64 or 128 GB sizes. By going solid state instead of a traditional mechanical drive, it lowers noise and increases portability. I think the solid state is going to push computers and cooling to finally see them showing up on devices. The keyboard was impressive though of a small size, and I found it easy and comfortable to use, albeit a bit noisy.
Ports are quite limited on this PC due to its small size. It only has one USB port! Do you believe this? If you want to use more than one USB device, you need to buy a hub. It has a built-in Air port and buttons to turn off BlueTooth and Wireless networking, which is nice. There is also an SD card slot to make transferring digital media easier. A VGA port is available to connect this PC to a larger monitor, but this is standard equipment on most free computers.
You would think with this compact computer that it would be quiet, but it is not. All the time it’s on, the fans run full blast to the air port from the left side of the base. Even with the computer sitting idle, the fan never let up, and not everyone was quiet. This is not a noisy machine, but in a quiet environment those small fans are quite audible.
Although this computer seems kind of thin, Dell backs it with a 3 year warranty. I was really surprised that when most PCs come with either 90 days or one year, it is certainly better. Dell’s 3 year standard warranty helps to keep costs down, but this is still an expensive war machine with a base price of @$2000.
If you want something portable and small, then you can consider the Dell Latitude E4200. Personally, I think it’s overpriced for what it offers, and to be better, spending a little more than the Panasonic Toughbook PC.
