Dell Latitude X1 review

Permanent storage is on a 60GB 4,200rpm hard disk and there's an external USB enclosure for the bundled CD-RW drive. It's powered by the notebook through a dual plug with USB and power connectors. Although it's always nice to have a built-in optical drive, it's easy to forgive its absence when you consider the weight saving, dropping the 1.6kg bundle down to just 1.1kg.

It's harder to excuse the lack of a PC Card slot or docking port, though, and you can't just slot in a 3G phone card (Dell will be selling a USB dock from Targus). Other connections are well arranged, with the two USB ports, VGA, mini-FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet and modem all easy to access. Bluetooth and 802.11b/g are standard, and there are handy CompactFlash and SD card slots too.

The similarities to Samsung's highly desirable Q30 are striking. They have different styling and minor differences to keyboard layout, but it's essentially the same design. Even the connectors, card slots and batteries are all but identical. Neither quite match IBM's ThinkPad X40, with its outstanding build quality and docking options, but in a direct comparison Samsung's Q30 is more stylish and squeezes better battery life from its two bundled batteries. However, the Dell Latitude is essentially the same great notebook for a lot less money and with a far superior warranty, making it a great-value alternative. Just make sure you use E-Value code MAG-X1PCP if you want this exact configuration.

Author: Roger Kirkwood