Compaq Evo Notebook N410c - PIII-M 1.2 GHz - 12.1" TFT

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Average
Look & Feel	Excellent
Comfort & Portability	Good
Robustness & Durability	Excellent
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Small, nice to use, adequate for most office use
Disadvantages:	Fan spins up now and then, faster cpu wouldnt hurt

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

For such an old laptop released a few years back, this laptop is sufficient for office, internet and video playback needs. Im currently running with 512mb of ram. The laptop battery may need to be replaced depending on how well the previous owner treated it because with most old laptops the batteries dont hold much charge, this one can however still hold under an hour. Batteries are very cheap on ebay.

VERY ROBUST, its so strong, after a few drops, only scratches, one crack on the back but it suffered from a high fall on concrete, but still runs the same, no new noise introduced, no new anoyances (if thats a word?) lol

This thing is TINY, so small that newer mini laptops that are expensive because of their mobility would find this to be competition. the diagnal measure of the whole system corner to corner is just about 12 " which is small.

It is very quiet, near silent until the fan spins up every 20 minutes to regulate cooling on mine.

upgrade path is limited to more hard drive space and more RAM. the 256mb models would have one slot left for another RAM stick. This thing can be upgraded to 1 gb of RAM which is really nice for an old laptop.

The cpu is more than adequete for what i use the laptop for. Office use and internet is a pleasure on the compaq evo because of its lightweight mobility. I just love it when people ask me, is that a new vaio in your hands when its closed, i tell them no its a compaq evo i bought for £150 and everyones amazed at the size of the thing for its age. And it isnt comprosed on performance as its specs match bigger models from other brands of its time. like i said, its just fine with Office work and internet. The screen is good for video playback, and the docking station you get with it provides you with good speakers. This laptop was designed to be a lightweight package, so they cut out the extras that you may not need like CD drive and floppy etc, but the docking station has all of these things.

The kayboard is one of the best iv seen on a laptop, generally laptop keyboards are rubbish in my opinion, but honestly, this keyboard is EXCELLENT i find it easier to touch type on it than my desktop. If im doing my C/W then i prefer using this to my quad core upstrs. plus its nice to work in the garden hehe:)

Best thing to do when you buy this (which you should) is change the battery, upgrade the RAM to 1gb (you wont regret it, it gives such a boost) and give it a clean to make it run and look like an expensive new laptop....iv gotten away with it :):):)

Finally the average price these things goe for are what makes this stand out. similar offerings from toshiba and others at the same price segment just cannot compete with what this gives you, and iv tried the others, the toshiba is nice but not compact or as powerful or nice to use like this.

I say satisfactory to manufacture support and manual instructions because for and old laptop they wouldnt provide support (thank you ciao for forcing such a rating out of me unfairly) and also i did not recieve a manual so i cannot say, so i gave it satisfactory to be fair.