I confirmed the configuration of the Latitude C400. It has 1.2GHz PIII mobile CPU, 256MB of RAM, no internal wireless card and as I mentioned in a previous post a failing (20GB) hard drive. I checked Dell's support website to see what else I could find out about it. It has two slots for RAM (upgradable to 1GB (2x512MB)), but only one is "user" accessible. There is removable door on the bottom that accesses one of the slots. Access to the other slot involves removing the keyboard. Dell's website has fairly detailed instructions explaining how to take it apart, so I gave it a try and it is pretty easy. I was surprised at the ease of getting it to the point where I had access to the RAM slot and even more surprised at the ease of getting it all back together again.
Right next to RAM slot under the keyboard is a mini PCI slot. Since I didn't pay anything for laptop, I decided it would be okay to spend a bit of money on a few upgrades. Danika's mom was using a wireless 802.11g PCMCIA card, but it sticks out pretty far. I confirmed one of the options for the mini PCI slot is a wireless card and the next thing I did was check eBay to see how much it could cost to put in a 802.11g card. I found one (Intel Pro 2200) for $13 and promptly bought it.
Next up was to check out the cost of a RAM upgrade. 256MB is fine for running Fedora, but I figured I may as well see how much it would cost to bump it up. I checked eBay and it looked like it was going to be a bit more expensive ($50-80) than I thought worth it, but yesterday I was able to score 1GB (2x512MB) of RAM for $20!
Finally, the hard drive. After smartd reported issues, I ran badblocks and it reported 20 bad blocks, so I thought it best to look for a hard drive as well. I was unable to find any great deals on eBay, but since I can always find another use for hard drives, I decided to just get a new one from Newegg (160GB Samsung spinpoint).
I hope the upgrades arrive sometime next week, and in the mean time I thought I would play around with the Fedora install I already had on it. I was able to get Fedora 11 installed on it encountering only a few issues along the way (the biggest being that the current Fedora 11 kernel does not support the legacy (i810) video chip sets very well). It a bit snappier than I expected. It has no problem running Firefox 3.5 (which is mostly what I will be doing with it) and the display is big enough that I don't find it annoying. The keyboard is taking a little getting used to, but probably no more than it did to get used to my other laptop's keyboard. Overall, I really have no complaints (about the laptop, Fedora 11 is another story) especially since I didn't pay anything for it.
So far I am really digging the C400, enough that I plan to watch ebay for other C400s and if I see another one for less than $50, I will probably place a bid, if nothing else to have some replacement parts. It really is great little laptop.
