Dell Latitude 2100 review

The webcam included here is another option, but rather oddly you can't specify it without the touchscreen. The two come as a combined extra, totalling £20 exc VAT. And you also have to pay extra to get draft-n wireless - the default specification gives you just 802.11bg.

You'd be mad to specify anything other than Windows XP with a netbook, so it's just as well that Dell offers it as an option. Our sample was running Vista Home Basic, and as a result performance was a little behind what we expect from a netbook equipped with an Atom N270 and 1GB of RAM. It scored 0.32 in our benchmarks.

Battery life was even worse. Our review model came with the rather weedy three-cell battery, and while this keeps the weight down it also capped battery life at a disappointing 2hrs 40mins in our light-use test. You can upgrade to the six-cell model, but this adds £16 exc VAT to the price.

All these extra costs start to mount, and if you want to get hold of a top-spec Latitude 2100 you'll need to shell out a lot of cash. The starting price is £309 exc VAT and that's without the touchscreen and webcam of our review model, or the more practical six-cell battery. But it's more usable than the consumer-focused Mini 10, and its sturdy, rubber-coated chassis means it's the most resilient netbook we've yet seen for use in classrooms.

Author: Jonathan Bray