Compaq Presario 1000 Series: Notebook for study, play

Compaq Presario 1000 Series: Notebook for study, play

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Pick any notebook computer in Glodok, West
Jakarta, today with a sticker price of at least Rp 6 million
(US$2,473), and you may wonder what else could be improved. Sure,
we'd love to have a faster CPU, a larger hard disk, a larger
screen and more RAM, but is there anything else notebook makers
could do to make the excellent notebooks of today even more
irresistible? Obviously, there are still a couple of neat things
that could make them better. The Compaq Presario 1000 Series
shows you how this can be done.

I got the chance to play around with a Presario 1060 because
my niece had fallen totally and religiously in love with it and
didn't want to look at anything else. So we went to Computer City
in Glodok Plaza and took a look around. Finally we came to the
right shop, where mbak Wati gave us a price that swept us off our
feet. My niece paid for the notebook right there and then. When
we left Glodok, I said to my niece, "Sorry, I want to keep this
thing for a couple of nights before you have it." She had no
choice but to let me have the opportunity to toy with it first.

Two models of these handsome notebooks are available. The
1060, the one that my niece bought, has a 120 MHz Pentium
processor, an 11.3" Dual Scan STN screen, a NiMH battery, a 1.08
GB hard disk, and a six-speed CD-ROM drive. It has no secondary
cache. The better model runs -- maybe flies -- on a 166 MHz
Pentium with MMX Technology, a 12.1" active matrix SVGA display,
a lithium ion battery, a 1.44 GB hard disk, and a 10-speed CD-ROM
drive. The 1082 also has 256 KB of level-2 cache memory since it
uses such a high-performance processor. With all these high-end
features, you wouldn't really be surprised to learn that the
price of the 1082 is almost 60 percent higher than that of the
1060. Both of them come standard with 16 MB EDO RAM, a touchpad
and a 128-bit graphics accelerator.

Beyond the specs

The shape of both the 1060 and 1082 is eye-catching, to say
the least. They look as sleek as a Ferrari Testarosa. When you
close the notebook, the cover doesn't really fit the bottom part.
This is because Compaq deliberately puts the dual port speakers
in front, facing your chest rather than facing up to the ceiling.

Unlike the Armada Series, the weight of the notebook is hefty
(about seven pounds). However, you have both the CD-ROM and
floppy diskette drives already built-in. Most other notebooks
boast a flexible bay where you can insert one or the other, but
I've rarely seen a notebook that has both drives at the same
time. Still, it would be nice if Compaq added another option: To
remove both drives and cover their bays with plastic lids just to
reduce the total weight.

Both of these machines are fully multimedia notebooks. The
microphone is thoughtfully placed on the top of the screen, so it
wouldn't pick up any background noise from the keyboard or the
fan. Like the heavy-duty Compaq LTE, these Presarios apparently
also have a fan that works automatically when heat buildup inside
the housing reaches a certain level.

Compaq uses the famous JBL speakers for their desktop
Presarios. For these notebooks, they use what they call Premier
Sound stereo speakers. Because of their larger size and better
placement, they produce the best sound reproduction I've ever
heard from notebook speakers. When the screen is folded, we can
still hear the sound from the exposed speaker grills. This way,
you could use the notebook as a very expensive Discman.

Other Pluses

The Easy Access buttons are another innovation. These are four
buttons located between the two speakers and they control the
operation of the CD-ROM drive. Place an audio CD in the drive and
press the button on the left side. The Compaq Audio CD Player
applet will pop up and the music starts playing. Press the second
button to stop. Press the third to skip forward or the last one
to go back to the previous track. By the way, you'll know exactly
what each button does because you can read it on the screen.
Presario 1000 Series are the first notebooks with on-screen
display that I've ever seen.

What I like most is the Quick Restore CD. This rescue kit is
actually already common among brand-name computers, including IBM
and Aptiva. Should your children ever wreak havoc inside your
hard disk, making it impossible to revive the computer and
rearrange its contents, just place the supplied diskette in its
drive and reboot. Place the CD-ROM inside its drive, and after a
while the hard disk will become as fresh as it was when you first
took the notebook out of its box.

The keyboard feel is acceptable, although I still prefer
Toshiba's. At least the keys are very clearly marked. You
wouldn't need the manual in order to find the Fn-combination key
for reducing the screen's brightness or increase its contrast.
Like the Easy Access buttons, you'll see the blue on-screen
display each time you change the display setting.

My niece is going to take this notebook to Australia, where
she studies. Needless to say, both of us really appreciate
Compaq's thoughtfulness in including three different power cables
in the box. As you already know, in the Down Under they use a
rather unique type of electrical plug, and it was already
supplied with her new Presario 1060.

This notebook came bundled with Microsoft Works 4.0, LapLink
for Windows, Video-CD player applet, and other software bonuses.

The wish list

After all the above compliments to Presario 1060, now comes
the time to find a little fault with it. First of all, I think
there are too many extra keys on the bottom row of the keyboard
that it becomes a little bit too crowded. You have the Alt keys
on both sides of the space bar, but the Del key is placed on the
top right-hand corner. We normally expect this key to be adjacent
to the Ins key.

Movie playback didn't look very good on this 1060 because it
didn't use a TFT screen. If you're a movie fancier, you'd better
opt for the more costly model. Furthermore, in this price range,
we would expect an infrared port to be present. It isn't. And the
bag that mbak Wati gave us was simply too thin to really protect
the notebook. The power adaptor is also larger than what you
would like to stuff inside your carry-on bag on the airplane.

To be fair, all these shortcomings are minor, though,
especially when we compare them against the pluses that they
have. Compaq has designed the Presario 1000 Series specifically
for students, not for professionals who travel from one hotel
room to another. With this in mind, I think this notebook fits
nicely with the typical tiny desk in a student dormitory. It can
function as a capable tool for both serious studying and serious
playing. The only significant problem is, not very many students
are as fortunate and wealthy as this distant niece of mine, who
can afford its cost. For the large majority of other students,
the price is still far beyond their reach.

So, here we are still waiting for a truly affordable learning
tool called the personal computer.