Dell Latitude X300 Notebook Computer

Dell Latitude X300 Review

by Carla Thornton

- What's Hot: Take a 3-pound notebook and give it speed, a good keyboard, and lots of expansion choices, and you have Dell's Latitude X300, an ultraportable that's more tempting than most. The X300 pushes thin-and-light performance to new heights with its 1.2-GHz/600-MHz Pentium M mobile processor. Equipped with 640MB of RAM, our review unit earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 116, only 5 percent behind the average score of 122 earned by the 11 notebooks we've tested so far with Intel's top-performing 1.6-GHz and 1.7-GHz Pentium M processors and 512MB of RAM. The X300's design is superior overall compared with other ultraportables. One unusual nicety is an LED gauge on the bottom that lets you easily check remaining battery life. And while the keyboard is narrower and shallower than a full-size notebook's, we found it steady and easy to use. We could touch-type as fast as we do on a larger Dell Inspiron, with no problem hitting the keys or feeling held back by the keyboard's dimensions. (The keys depress 2.4mm and are spaced 18mm apart, close to the standard notebook keyboard measurements of 3mm and 19mm, respectively.) A generously sized touchpad and partially rubberized mouse buttons round out the pleasing typing experience.