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Dell Latitude L400 Review
This model of Dell definitely deserves to be called ultraportable. Maybe not in comparison with the newest models, but when it appeared on the market about year 2000 it was one of the most lightweight notebooks.
Latitude L400 features single-drive, compact design. Overall mechanical design is rather plain, but robust and durable, which is the feature of all Dell laptops. Casing is made of brushed magnesium.
L400 was designed to be light and portable. And it is, but this was achieved at the expense of other things. Latitude L400 doesn't have any internal drives except HDD. It comes with External Media Bay, where you can install 1.44MB 3.5" floppy disk drive, CD-ROM drive (both come as standard) or several other types of drives listed in the table below. It has also only 12.1" TFT display.
The most common configuration you will meet on refurbished laptops market is PIII Mobile 700MHz, 128 or 256MB RAM and 10GB HDD. Unfortunately, except HDD, this is the top configuration you can have. L400 has only one memory slot and the biggest memory module you can install is 256MB. You can find opinions that memory in Latitude L400 is not upgradeable and once factory configured cannot be changed. That is not true. Memory in L400 is placed in standard memory slot under the keyboard. Although you cannot increase the amount of memory by installing second module, you can replace the current one with a bigger, 256MB version.
As there were versions with hard drives up to 30GB, you can safely replace your current disk with another up to 30GB with no hassle. You can install also bigger hard drives, although this may demand BIOS upgrade, because of hard drive capacity BIOS limitations (read our Laptop Hard Drives Guide to learn more about hard drives and BIOS limitations). I've found posts, on Dell Community Forum, from people who installed 40GB drives without any problems even in older LS series of Latitudes. Because the next limitation over 32GB you can meet is at 134GB, you should be able to successfully install any drive (remember it cannot be thicker than 9.5mm).
Most users like Latitude L400 touchpad and keyboard. However, people with bigger fingers may dislike the latter as it has a little smaller keys than typical (95% of typical keyboard).
The 12.1" display is bright, vivid with good colors. Its maximum resolution is 1024 x 768, which is more than enough for this screen size.
Sound from L400 side-mounted mono speaker is really weak but that is inevitable with less than 1-inch diameter speaker. You can always use external speakers or headphones if you want to have better sound quality.
Because of its compact dimensions and weight, Latitude L400 is a great travel companion. It should work on standard 4-cell battery for 2.5 hours. Better, 6-cell battery should suffice for 3.5 hours of use.
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