I was in the market for a notebook for the last four months and having had a bad experience with 1400 series think pads, was convinced that I would never buy a laptop, too many headaches. Any way, Compaq Factory works happens to be on the way to work, and I would stop there from time to time to check if they had any bargains. I came across a 'Built To Order'1600s which was 'excess new'. These are the specs;

AMD K6 III 450 MHZ processor w/ 1MB L3 cache
64 MB RAM
14.1 inch Active Matrix (TFT) screen
ATi Rage LT Pro w/ 8 MB SGRAM
6 Gig Hard Drive
4X DVD-ROM
56K Lucent Win Modem
JBL Pro Dolby Digital Certified speakers
MS Office SBE bundled cds.

The notebook is well built; there is a little play on one of the latches, but its hardly noticeable. The system runs very fast, even with 64 MB RAM. This is a system that was custom built and later cancelled by a customer. Its not even listed on the compaq works' website. I purchased it for $1599 plus tax. It comes with a year of parts and labor warranty.

The display is of good quality and is able to display up to 24-bit color depth, which is adequate. It is evenly lit and there are no smudges or discoloration anywhere on the screen. The Rage LT Pro video chipset can display an internal resolution (32-bit) up to 1024X768, and an external resolution up to 1600X1200. Frame rates in games are also very playable (I tried Falcon 4.0,MiG-29 Fulcrum and Half Life). There is no TV-out, however, like on the more expensive 1800XL or 1600XL series (which use intel processors). The main difference between the 1600s & the 1600XL-450 is that, besides a different casing, the XL series has a Trident Video chip that uses shared memory (thereby reducing the main memory available), unlike the one in this model, which has dedicated video memory.

DVD play back is smooth, uses the Mediamatics DVD player. And by the way, unlike the i-macs, it has a floppy drive. There is also a docking option that can be purchased separately for $99.

It also has easy access keys for Internet short cuts and personalized apps. Overall, I like the laptop and hope there were more of these around, because looking at the price performance ratio, it does not make any compromises, and I hope to keep it for a relatively long time.

****** Update ******

I have successfully installed Windows 2000 on this notebook without any problems. The potential issue with the lucent modem not working under Windows NT has been finally resolved with Windows 2000. You don't even need to install the drivers, windows does it for you. The only feature that is not working is the Internet zone (instant access keys) under w2k.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 1599
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: 401-500
Screen Size: 14"
RAM: 64
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 4-6