Undocking unit from slice was a breeze. Machine blinked once, then told us to immediately remove computer from the base unit. We did, too -- we didn't want the machine mad at us. About a half-second after undocking, we were right back to our original screen. Wonderful stuff. Just a few years ago, you couldn't hot-swap a battery without knocking out the half the power grid of the eastern seaboard.
Even undocked, unit features two USB ports, VGA, serial port, and a FireWire port. Docking unit adds to the ports of call with parallel, serial, and PS/2 inputs. Floppy drive in docking unit was about as fast as continental drift, however.
Base station also includes 3.5' floppy drive and optical drive. Our test unit came with an 8X DVD/CD-RW combo drive. That drive no longer available -- now you have to spring for a 24X optical drive... Latitude boasts three-year warranty, along with Dell's top-notch customer service. Plus, Dell notebook comes with MS Office Professional -- a nice touch.
All in all, another fine computer from Round Rock. Would have garnered an even higher rating, but X200 seems a bit on the pricey side to us. Without docking station, Dell portable costs close to $2,000 (and that's after a recent price drop). Similar Gateway model has same sticker -- but includes swell docking unit. If you want the Dell X200 with the multimedia slice, you'll have to pay about $2,300. Yes you will.
(Editor's Note: Thin is in for notebook computers, but how about the computer makers themselves — how much cash do they keep on hand? See for yourself with the CFO PeerMetrix interactive scorecards.)
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