Good bargin for features/price
Written: Sep 26 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good features for price point Active Matrix, DVD,
Cons: Shared Video RAM arch. , Restore disk/2 gig system partition uses 1/3 of disk space
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| cc3373's Full Review: Compaq Presario 1200XL111 (164027-003) PC Notebook |
This laptop has alot of good features for the price. The features included for hardware and software are good for the price you pay. You get Internet capability (AOL type ISP software and NetZero free access software are included). You get Microsoft Works and multimedia MP3 creation software too. You get DVD, a fair sized active matrix screen, 64 meg ram etc
Some things to note: the video ram is a shared ram architechture and uses part of your regular ram for video processing. You can determine how much it allocates in Control Panel, Display settings. Since the laptop is offerred with 64 meg of ram this is generally adequate for surfing and having a couple of apps open at a time. For gaming, graphics apps you may need to increase your ram to 128 meg ... I think the peformance is generally quite good and have been able to run Photoshop, Notepad, Internet Explorer at the same time etc w/o issue for the most part.
Another thing to be aware of is that of the 6 gig hard drive space ~2 gig is used by "backup files" ...these are cab files, batch files etc to work in conjunction with the Restore CDRom to "rebuild" your system. Crucially on this partition (the D drive) are you proprietary Compaq drivers for video, sound etc...these are not on the Restore CD, don't delete this partition or you will not be able to rebuild the system since you won't have Windows, the McAfee, Works etc and more importantly the drivers. The drivers generally aren't available on the vendor's or third party driver sites because the are proprietary. You can contact Compaq support to obtain the "2nd" Restore disk which is equal to the D drive contents (check the CD you receive against the D drive before removing anything just to be sure).
I would say those two things were the biggest drawbacks I saw to the laptop. Additionally the keyboard is somewhat awkward in placement and key response/shape but acceptable.
The DVD performance is acceptably good, only a couple of dropped frames once in awhile. Make sure you keep the back of the laptop towards open space while its running since there are two fans there which come on when it gets too hot (usually when the DVD Rom is running they come on periodically, they are noticably noisy but not overbearingly bad
It is a great value for the price point with the DVD, RAM, Hard drive, screen size of 13" and also especially since it is an Active Matrix screen (cheap notebooks usually have HPA screens or DS screens which are duller and not recommended for long term eye comfort).
I recommend it but you should always shop around...since the hardware scene changes rapidly these days.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
cc3373
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Reviews written: 1
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