The Latitude C610, an update version of Dell business laptop, the Latitude C600, is also lightweight.Enjoys better Latitude C610 battery life–about 4 hours per charge. And Dell corrected an annoying limitation of the Latitude C610: You can order the C610 with both standard modem and network connections and a wireless Mini-PCI radio built in.
Like its predecessor, the Dell C610 caters to companies seeking a light portable suitable for sharing. It boasts a removable hard drive, both eraserhead and touchpad pointing devices, and a modular bay on the front that can hold any of a range of devices, including a travel module that drops the notebook’s weight to 5.3 pounds (4.9 pounds if you order a unit with a four-cell battery instead of our review unit’s eight-cell). The color icons that identify the rear connections make attaching peripherals easier.
Aside from an S-Video port you can use to attach the laptop to a TV, the Dell C610 offers few multimedia bells and whistles. The stereo speakers sound not so good,and no dedicated audio controls available for playing music CDs.
The Latitude C610 battery wears a slender dark case with a no-nonsense design. At this price, you get a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive that uses the same modular bay as the floppy drive. You can use both at once by attaching the floppy drive externally to the parallel port, using the included cable. Other bay options include a second 20GB hard drive, a Zip 250 drive, or a supplemental battery for stretching the C610’s already impressive run time.It’s easy to reach parts, especially the hard drive, which slides out of the notebook’s side with the removal of one screw.
The C610’s keyboard is quieter than the Latitude C600’s, and its eraserhead mouse buttons are more comfortable than the hard-to-press concave buttons on Dell’s new all-in-one, the Latitude C810. Unlike most laptops these days,which bristle with quick-launch buttons, the C610 offers just one for jumping to your favorite Web site or application. The C610’s PC WorldBench 4 score of 99 is in line with the scores achieved by the other three notebooks we’ve tested with a 1-GHz Pentium III-M processor (733 MHz under battery power) and 256MB of RAM.
The Dell C610 should satisfy corporate buyers, as it offers just about everything a company needs in a highly flexible portable. It gives you built-in wireless readiness along with more-traditional networking connections; both eraserhead and touchpad pointing devices; and the ability to rotate multiple add-in devices, including a backup Latitude C610 battery.