The Compaq Armada 100s was the first laptop that I ever purchased, I bought mine second hand, (from a company dealing in refurbished laptops,) last year, as something to use for basic wordprocessing at school. I parted with a months pay and the machine was delivered. Out of the price I ... Read review
(+) cool and quite robust trackpad, good display,64-bit windows 7 (-) few connectors,dell drivers only, not realy for gameing (most models), finger print prone!
Advantages: Good prices Disadvantages: Low specification for age, Not Upgradable
The Compaq Armada 100s was the first laptop that I ever purchased, I bought mine second hand, (from a company dealing in refurbished laptops,) last year, as something to use for basic wordprocessing at school. I parted with a months pay and the machine was delivered. Out of the price I could spend on a laptop, I was amazed I could get a Compaq system with a 550mhz processor, whilst the other laptops in this range where lucky to break past the 233mhz ... .../>
I can not blame Compaq for this failure, laptop hard drives are notoriously tempremental, and this one with five years of service, had a broken controller, thats a fact of life, I parted with £30 and replaced it with a practically identical model. After installing the new hardrive, I reatempted the Windows 2000 install.
One brand spanking new Windows 2000 installation later, I now had a computer that to put it bluntly, could possibly ... more
The Compaq Armada 100s was the first laptop that I ever purchased, I bought mine second hand, (from a company dealing in refurbished laptops,) last year, as something to use for basic wordprocessing at school. I parted with a months pay and the machine was delivered. Out of the price I could spend on a laptop, I was amazed I could get a Compaq system with a 550mhz processor, whilst the other laptops in this range where lucky to break past the 233mhz barrier, feeling like I'd got a very good deal, I opened the box and booted up. The machine, seemed to "fit like a glove," out of all the laptop keyboard that I have used, none of them have ever come close to the one on my Armada, as a touch typist, who takes dictations via. a keyboard, I find it is vital to have a good, responsive keyboard, over a year of me bashing away at 40wpm on it, not once did a key wear, let alone break. After a month of running the machine more than happily on Windows 98, as a nerd, I thought I'd upgrade to Windows 2000, despite the minimum specs being well below the RAM cabability of the machine, but thinking "It's alright, I just need to use Word," I duly, despite all warnings had the first attempt at installing Windows 2000. 78% of the way though the install, I was greeted with a computer that randomly seemed to turn itself off, ten minutes later, I was on the phone to a computer supplier ordering a new hard-drive for my laptop........
I can not blame Compaq for this failure, laptop hard drives are notoriously tempremental, and this one with five years of service, had a broken controller, thats a fact of life, I parted with £30 and replaced it with a practically identical model. After installing the new hardrive, I reatempted the Windows 2000 install.
One brand spanking new Windows 2000 installation later, I now had a computer that to put it bluntly, could possibly loss a race with a 128k Sinclair Spectrum for boot speed, I now had the most unstable, resource hungry opperating system imagingable on a Word processor, despite the clock speed of the Armada 100s being quite impressive for its time, the engineers at Compaq where positively miserly with RAM, weighing in at only 56megs (shared graphics...) the Armada was sinking under the strain of Windows 2000.
You live and learn, I'll go back to Windows 98 I thought, thats if the CDROM drive hadn't of stopped working at that exact moment; the drive had detatched itself, after plugging back in it has never worked to this day, I'm left with a system that is stuck with an operating system it can't handle.
I can not blame Compaq for my error, however I feel that the machine was built with a redicioiously small amount of RAM (even Windows 98 likes more room to breathe than 56MB RAM) that even other machines of the same time with lower clock speeds, are far more reliable and stable than the early Armada series.
I've put the Armada away now with mixed feelings, it had a lot of toys, and lovely keyboard, touchpad, great battery life, just perhaps, perhaps, perhaps if the Compaq engineers had put a slower chip, and a bit more RAM in the system, the ideal laptop could have been created. The ratings I am going to give to the product should be disregared really, I can't describe in words how I feel about this product.
Compaq Armada provides the industry's best portable solution for the corporate environment by presenting a complete line of corporate notebook products to meet every user need. These notebooks combine stability and consistency with low total cost of ownership, as well as offer superior manageability, and excellent reliability and support. To make your mobility solutions selection easier, Compaq has developed the Value line within the Armada Portable family. The Value line offers full expandability, providing all-in-one solutions for active professionals who need a combination of features in a single notebook. The Compaq Armada 100S delivers essential notebook computing solutions at groundbreaking prices. Armada 100S is designed for budget conscious business users who need instant productivity.
