Hey guys,
Long time reader, first time posting.. The forums rejected my yahoo email account for the longest time when I tried to sign up.. but I finally used another email addy and it worked. First off I'd like to thank everyone that participate in this forum to bring the rest of us all these great deals, this forum is the first thing I read when i get on the computer every morning.
Anyway I was one of the peeps that got in on this deal. I've had 4 slim notebooks in the past, and they were around $2.5-3k price range. This is definately the best out of all the ones that I've had. And it only cost a fraction to boot.
Here's my review:
My notebook came brand new in a factory sealed box, it still had the plastic film on the TFT. The CSR@pcmall told me that it came with an external floppy drive when I ordered, but I wasn't counting on it. The case is nice and solid, not flimsy like the Dell I had. The mobile chip is an Intel model P6C Coppermine with 256k L2 cache and it's not upgradable. Although the ATI Rage mobility is running on AGP 2x, the video mem is a bit low for any kind of serious 3d gaming (12-17fps running 1024 opengl in counterstrike), but for normal everyday use its more than enough. 256megs of pc100 SDRAM sits in bank1, with bank2 free for up to 512megs max. The 30 gig ultra ATA drive is definately more than enough for a notebook. I especially like the active cooling system. The fan switches on automatically when it starts getting warm so it's never hot to the touch (unlike the Dell). I don't care about Multiport because its too expensive to upgrade, instead I just use a wireless PCMCIA card. Wireless network won't function unless I disable the internal NIC, but that's probably a windows98 issue. The keys are full size, quiet and very responsive. There are 4 programmable internet buttons located above the keyboard. The pointing stick takes a little work to get used to, but I've had no problems adjusting. The notebook has a TVout, an analog monitor out, mic in/audio out, 2 USBs (1.1), a COM port, a parallel port and 1 PCMCIA slot. I don't think there's a PS/2 port, if there is I haven't found it yet. The built-in speakers seem to "crackle" a bit when the volume is all the way up, but other than that the ESS audio chipset handles MP3s very well and without distortion on external speakers. There are two silver volume adjustment buttons located on the front of the machine but I havent been able to get them to work yet. So far I've been using software to adjust volume. The ATI RAGE mobility drivers and BIOS are both quick and easy to update.
Sandra benchmarks:
CPU: ALU 1863 MIPS FPU 937 MFLOPS.
RAM: Int 747MB/sec Float 603 MB/sec.
It's pretty much up to par with the same spec desktops.
I looked into upgrading the OS to windows XP. It seems like Compaq has all the necessary XP drivers for this machine. You can either do a local hard drive install (copied via LAN), remove and ghost the drive or get an external USB CDROM.
Overall I give this notebook a 8 out of 10.
Factor in the price, I give it a 9 1/2.
For those of you that missed out on this deal, my other option was to get a refurb VAIO ultraslim. I think you can still find them for about a $150 more.
Check
www.clearanceclub.com and shop by brand. They come with a short warranty though.