I
have been a Dell Latitude
XPi user for well over one year now but I recently had the opportunity
to try out Dell's entry into the multimedia notebook computers with the
Latitude LM series.
The machine that we received had 24MB RAM, 1.3GB hard disk, 6X CD-ROM, 3.5" floppy and a 133 MHZ Pentium processor. The LCD screen was a 12.1" diagonal active matrix screen with 1MB video RAM and built in MPEG decompression. It also included a built-in Sound Blaster compatible sound card that uses the ESS 1688 chipset. Since our company does not support Windows 95, it was installed with DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. It also boasted a built-in infra-red COM port. System price as configured $3,498 from Dell.
The first thing that I noticed was that the computer was just slightly larger than the Latitude XPi series that I was used to using and weighed slightly more (about 7 lbs.). The computer still fit in my normal carrying case although it was a little tighter fit. The CD-ROM and floppy drive are removable and only one can be installed inside the case at one time. If you need to use both at the same time, the floppy can be connected externally to the system through the parallel port and a cable that is included with the system.
When I started up the system I was impressed with the quality of the screen and the sound system. I ran several of the Video for Windows files and some Quicktime movies. The results were very good and I had fun playing around with the system.
I ran into my first disappointments when I began to connect it to our network through the PCMCIA Ethernet cards. The system uses the Phoenix Card Socket Services and I spent a while trying different configurations to get more available conventional memory. Before loading the necessary drivers only 33K of upper memory was available to load any drivers in upper memory. I talked with Dell through their 800 number and spent some time trying to get more memory for DOS programs and Windows to run in.
After talking to them, I spent some more time talking to Phoenix Card Services technical support to make sure that I was loading only the drivers that I needed. The final result and recommendation was that the system was not really designed to be connected to a network using DOS and Windows. We were still able to get it up and running but it had less than 400K of conventional memory available. This greatly reduced the ability to run multiple programs simultaneously under Windows.
Shortly after this, we decided that we could not live with this configuration and decided to install Windows NT 4.0. I was able to install NT very quickly and with only a few little tricks. NT did not recognize the video driver or sound system automatically so NT installed it with the generic 640x480 16 color VGA driver and no sound card. After the install was complete, I went into the monitor settings in the control panel and changed the driver to the NeoMagic 128 drivers included on the NT CDROM. Note: at this time there were no certified drivers specifically for this system available.
After copying the drivers to my hard disk, NT reported that it was unable to install the driver. However, after rebooting, the driver worked fine and I was able to then set the display to 800x600 256 color. It also worked well with the 1024x768 256 on an external monitor. There is also no NT 4.0 specific driver for the ESS Sound system built into the computer, but I was able to install the Sound Blaster drivers with the interrupts, etc. that are used by the ESS system. These interrupts are not the ones normally used by a Sound Blaster system but the drivers worked well and I had my sound running well in a couple of minutes. With this setup it has been more than satisfactory but I am anxious for the true video and sound drivers to be released which should be soon.
I know that Dell now has a Latitude XPi CD system that is more interchangeable with their original Latitude series and as I understand it has both the 3.5" floppy and CDROM installed internally. For someone that is using a Dell Latitude XPi and wants something they can interchange with the Latitude XPi CD system may be the better option for them. For those just looking to buy a good multimedia notebook that they could use for making presentations the Latitude LM deserves serious consideration.
Joe Brazell is an economics engineer for Ultramar Diamond Shamrock
with a background in computers and database management. He is also the
SIG leader for the Microsoft Access SIG.