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.