Update and Review:
Over the past month, I've purchased three laptops from Compaq. Yep, you've heard me right, three. First was the 1500T with 2.0ghz p4 chip, second the 900Z with a mobile athlon 1600+, and finally the 1500T with mobile celeron through staples. I've returned the first two after being dissatisfied with them. Here's my comparison of the three based on my personal experience over the last month.
The 1500T with 2.0ghz p4 chip ran much hotter than I wished. Also, the chip just didn't run as fast as I thought it would. Having upgraded from a Athlon 1800+ system with a 60 gb raid 0 hd and other amenities, I found the laptop to be sorely lacking in overall performance in both I/0 processes (yes I know laptops all have slower hard drives) and 3D gaming. So I decided to down grade to the 900Z series laptops, save some money and add a dvd player and a SXGA screen for the same price. A bargain, I thought.
The 900Z ran as hot as the 1500T with the P4 chip. I was surprised because I assumed a mobile chip (even an athlon mobile chip) would take into account the limited space inside the casing and account for the constraints on heating accordingly. In terms of performance, the mobile athlon 1600+ chip really offered no conspicuous deterioration in 2D performance. DVD playback, surfing the net, and multitasking with a variety of applications really didn't differ much at all from the 1500T. I was satisfied in this respect, however 3D performance took a really noticeable hit. The radeon IGP which has shared memory and slower gpu vs. the radeon 7500 with dedicated memory and based on the newer radeon core really made a marked difference in video games (Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo and High Heat Baseball 2003, Go Oakland!). Downgrading from the P4 w/ radeon 7500 to the Athlon 1600+ with radeon IGP was a huge mistake. At this point I wasn't too sure if the hit in 3D performance was just from the video card or a combination of both the processor and video card, but I soon found the answer to this question with the 1500T w/ mobile celeron from Staples.
I got my third laptop from Compaq yesterday. It's a 1500T with mobile celeron, 256mb ram, extended battery, and radeon 7500 32mb. My first concern was processor performance. Much to my pleasure the celeron offered no noticeable slowdown in performance either. I have no complaints about 2D performance, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the hard drive was the bottle neck in this area because I really see no difference going from the Pentium to the mobile Athlon to the mobile Celeron. In terms of 3D gaming, I was relieved to see the mobile celeron and radeon 7500 combo outperform the 900Z with mobile athlon and radeon IGP. In fact, I'm willing to say that the mobile celeron's performance is almost at par with the pentium 4's performance with the 7500. This led me to the conclusion that the radeon 7500 chip was the bottleneck in the 3D department and that a processor upgrade really wouldn't do too much to boost 3D performance. In terms of heating, the mobile celeron really showed why it's a true laptop processor. My keyboard would heat up with the other too chips but the mobile celeron doesn't at all. Also, feeling the ventilated air out of the processor heatsink and fan I notice a sharp drop in temperature from the P4 and the Mobile Athlon. Both of those chips would vent out hot air when processing large chunks of info but the mobile celeron vents out only warm air at most. I know these comparisons sound subjective without temperature readings but trust me the different in heat dissipation is very noticeable. I'm glad that I was able to see and use all three laptops because it's given me a good assessment of the three. And I can safely say that I have no regrets whatsoever with my final purchase.
Overall, I rate the the laptops as such:
1500T w/ 2.0ghz P4 and radeon 7500
------------------------------------------------
8/10 - Good performance and features yet pricing and heating are two big drawbacks.
900Z w/ Mobile Athlon 1600+ and radeon IGP
---------------------------------------------------------
7/10 - Good 2D performance and better price yet 3D performance and heating hold this baby back.
1500T w/ Mobile Celeron 1.4 and radeon 7500
----------------------------------------------------------
9/10 - I believe this to be the sweet spot. It has the best price/performance ratio of the three in both 2D and 3D applications as well as the same features as the P4 configuration. Heating, while it exists, is no where near the open stove fires that the other chips burned. I would give this puppy a 10/10 except that it too along with the other laptops only has a 4200rpm hard drive. I believe this to be a common bottleneck among the three laptops and hope to see Compaq move onto 5400rpm hard drives in the near future. In the meantime, I guess I'll keep an eye out for 2.5" 5400rpm laptop hard drives.
*Note: Performance really suffers with only 128mb of ram in Windows XP with all three of these laptops. I tried running them all with both 128mb of ram and 256mb of ram and I can say that 256mb of ram almost doubles your overall speed in Windows XP. Also, SXGA is really much better than XGA. This may sound like a subjective analysis but please go look at the screens and compare. A good comparision will help you not regret getting that crummy XGA screen lol.
Over the past month, I've purchased three laptops from Compaq. Yep, you've heard me right, three. First was the 1500T with 2.0ghz p4 chip, second the 900Z with a mobile athlon 1600+, and finally the 1500T with mobile celeron through staples. I've returned the first two after being dissatisfied with them. Here's my comparison of the three based on my personal experience over the last month.
The 1500T with 2.0ghz p4 chip ran much hotter than I wished. Also, the chip just didn't run as fast as I thought it would. Having upgraded from a Athlon 1800+ system with a 60 gb raid 0 hd and other amenities, I found the laptop to be sorely lacking in overall performance in both I/0 processes (yes I know laptops all have slower hard drives) and 3D gaming. So I decided to down grade to the 900Z series laptops, save some money and add a dvd player and a SXGA screen for the same price. A bargain, I thought.
The 900Z ran as hot as the 1500T with the P4 chip. I was surprised because I assumed a mobile chip (even an athlon mobile chip) would take into account the limited space inside the casing and account for the constraints on heating accordingly. In terms of performance, the mobile athlon 1600+ chip really offered no conspicuous deterioration in 2D performance. DVD playback, surfing the net, and multitasking with a variety of applications really didn't differ much at all from the 1500T. I was satisfied in this respect, however 3D performance took a really noticeable hit. The radeon IGP which has shared memory and slower gpu vs. the radeon 7500 with dedicated memory and based on the newer radeon core really made a marked difference in video games (Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo and High Heat Baseball 2003, Go Oakland!). Downgrading from the P4 w/ radeon 7500 to the Athlon 1600+ with radeon IGP was a huge mistake. At this point I wasn't too sure if the hit in 3D performance was just from the video card or a combination of both the processor and video card, but I soon found the answer to this question with the 1500T w/ mobile celeron from Staples.
I got my third laptop from Compaq yesterday. It's a 1500T with mobile celeron, 256mb ram, extended battery, and radeon 7500 32mb. My first concern was processor performance. Much to my pleasure the celeron offered no noticeable slowdown in performance either. I have no complaints about 2D performance, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the hard drive was the bottle neck in this area because I really see no difference going from the Pentium to the mobile Athlon to the mobile Celeron. In terms of 3D gaming, I was relieved to see the mobile celeron and radeon 7500 combo outperform the 900Z with mobile athlon and radeon IGP. In fact, I'm willing to say that the mobile celeron's performance is almost at par with the pentium 4's performance with the 7500. This led me to the conclusion that the radeon 7500 chip was the bottleneck in the 3D department and that a processor upgrade really wouldn't do too much to boost 3D performance. In terms of heating, the mobile celeron really showed why it's a true laptop processor. My keyboard would heat up with the other too chips but the mobile celeron doesn't at all. Also, feeling the ventilated air out of the processor heatsink and fan I notice a sharp drop in temperature from the P4 and the Mobile Athlon. Both of those chips would vent out hot air when processing large chunks of info but the mobile celeron vents out only warm air at most. I know these comparisons sound subjective without temperature readings but trust me the different in heat dissipation is very noticeable. I'm glad that I was able to see and use all three laptops because it's given me a good assessment of the three. And I can safely say that I have no regrets whatsoever with my final purchase.
Overall, I rate the the laptops as such:
1500T w/ 2.0ghz P4 and radeon 7500
------------------------------------------------
8/10 - Good performance and features yet pricing and heating are two big drawbacks.
900Z w/ Mobile Athlon 1600+ and radeon IGP
---------------------------------------------------------
7/10 - Good 2D performance and better price yet 3D performance and heating hold this baby back.
1500T w/ Mobile Celeron 1.4 and radeon 7500
----------------------------------------------------------
9/10 - I believe this to be the sweet spot. It has the best price/performance ratio of the three in both 2D and 3D applications as well as the same features as the P4 configuration. Heating, while it exists, is no where near the open stove fires that the other chips burned. I would give this puppy a 10/10 except that it too along with the other laptops only has a 4200rpm hard drive. I believe this to be a common bottleneck among the three laptops and hope to see Compaq move onto 5400rpm hard drives in the near future. In the meantime, I guess I'll keep an eye out for 2.5" 5400rpm laptop hard drives.
*Note: Performance really suffers with only 128mb of ram in Windows XP with all three of these laptops. I tried running them all with both 128mb of ram and 256mb of ram and I can say that 256mb of ram almost doubles your overall speed in Windows XP. Also, SXGA is really much better than XGA. This may sound like a subjective analysis but please go look at the screens and compare. A good comparision will help you not regret getting that crummy XGA screen lol.