Perfect machine for MAC defectors
Written: Oct 05 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Solid crash free performance, easy use for MAC switchers
Cons: flimsy case, noisy
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| drmo's Full Review: Compaq Presario 1200XL111 (164027-003) PC Notebook |
Until the arrival of the Compaq 1200, we were primarily a MAC household with 3 aging MACs (a Performa 6205, Color Classic and Classic). When the monitor on the Performa bit the dust, we decided that the time had come to get something new. In switching jobs from a MAC environment to a Windows based setup, I made the decision that the time had finally come to cut the MAC strings and go with the flow. Now that the Compaq laptop has come home, the MAC's have been sequestered to the attic. The kids (14, 9) love being able to take the laptop into their rooms to surf in privacy with their friends and they have gotten a lot of use out of the DVD drive. They like bringing the machine into the kitchen and doing homework while we're around to help them as well. We bought the ($100) car charging cord so they can watch movies in the back seat while we drive....this has worked out quite well.
I am not a computer person and was motivated in part to buy a laptop since I figured that all of the various components would be preinstalled and debugged so I wouldn't spend my life worrying about conflicts. For the most part this has been true. I have had the computer now since the summer (3 months) and have yet to call Compaq's tech support. I had no trouble plugging the machine into my current MAC printer (HP 870CSE)and getting it to work with the Office 2000 upgrade that I bought. AOL and a handful of games we've also purchased have performed flawlessly. We've noticed that the supplied Windows 98 OS with the MS Office 2000 upgrade and AOL version 4 (supplied) has been remarkably crash-free.
I've only had a few minor problems- the first related to plugging in a mouse. I felt that we would have trouble getting used to the finger pad so I purchased a USB mouse that I couldn't get to work. I finally gave up trying to get the driver working, so I borrowed a PS2 port mouse which worked intermittently.....the pointer would jump all over the screen from time to time- an inconvenience to game play. As it turned out, the family got used to the finger pad quite quickly so we trashed the mice and stopped trying to debug these. I've also had a few devastating crashes which required total restoration of the hard drive from the supplied restoration disk....this was quite easy and painless, although time consuming. The manual is pretty easy to follow and it instructs you how to replicate your hard drive on another disk partition for easy back up. I've had to do this twice when the kids loaded up software they got from friends that totally crashed the machine...this made the restoration quite straightforward. My last remaining issue is the inability to get RealPlayer to work properly...but I've just given up on this and can live without it anyway.
We've found the keyboard and controls very easy to use, however the left mouse button seems somewhat flimsy and looks like it is not going to make it past a year.....we'll have to see. We also bought the matching Targus case which fits the machine very well and is useful for bringing the computer along on family car trips to relatives, etc. The battery compartment is not very well designed- getting the cover off is a finger-nail destroyer. I've also noticed that battery life is only about an hour to 1.5 hours with the supplied Li-ion battery. This seems kind of cheap to me. The DVD drive also seems remarkably flimsy to me and really makes quite a racket when it revs up...like a noisy fan. The internal JBL sound system on its own sounds great, but the fidelity is compromised by the plastic case which rattles and buzzes at various harmonics when the volume is turned up. Nevertheless, despite these criticisms, we still like the machine a lot and would definitely recommend it to others.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
drmo
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Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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