Compaq Presario 2200

My parents bought me this laptop about two and a half years ago as I was about to start University and would need a laptop for doing work and checking emails. It was a bit of an offchance purchase as we were on holiday in Singapore and decided to buy it out there as they were considerably cheaper there than over here at that time, although it was still about £700.

It is a great laptop and it offers everything you expect a laptop to ...
...useful in my second year of University for connecting up to the internet quickly and with minimum fuss. However, it also has a network cable socket if you don't have a wireless network.

It is fairly aesthetically pleasing, with a black and silver finish. Because it doesn't have a widescreen as many laptops now do, it is very portable although it is still fairly heavy and so I would not want to carry it on a long journey. I love the ... more

My parents bought me this laptop about two and a half years ago as I was about to start University and would need a laptop for doing work and checking emails. It was a bit of an offchance purchase as we were on holiday in Singapore and decided to buy it out there as they were considerably cheaper there than over here at that time, although it was still about £700.

It is a great laptop and it offers everything you expect a laptop to offer, including a built in wireless transceiver, which was particularly useful in my second year of University for connecting up to the internet quickly and with minimum fuss. However, it also has a network cable socket if you don't have a wireless network.

It is fairly aesthetically pleasing, with a black and silver finish. Because it doesn't have a widescreen as many laptops now do, it is very portable although it is still fairly heavy and so I would not want to carry it on a long journey. I love the size of mine since I struggle with desk space in my room and so this really helps to give me maximum use of desk for getting work done.

The basic things included with this portable computer are:

It uses a Celeron 1.4Ghz processor which means it can read and process 1.4 million bits of information per second. Admittedly by today's standards this is not very fast as you can now get processors with speeds over 3Ghz. I mostly use my computer for surfing the internet and using the Windows software and occassionally for games and I have never found it too slow, althought this was one thing I was worried about when we first bought it.

My laptop has 512MB of RAM (Random Access Memory) which also affects the speed at which your computer runs whenmany programs are open, and this is prefectly adequate for my uses. I have Windows XP installed on my laptop, which I find very easy to use especially since I used Windows on a computer before. My hard drive has a 30GB capacity but since I have a lot of music and videos I found myself struggling with this space and so I invested in a 40GB portable hard drive to give me some extra space.

As I mentioned, I have a lot of music which I listen to and videos which I watch on my laptop. The speakers are great for this and the laptop has a 15" screen which although it is not a widescreen is still good for watching DVDs, especially as the colour resolution is great.

The keyboard on this laptop is comfortable to use but I found it uncomfortable using the scroll pad instead of a mouse. Luckily I got a wireless mouse free when I bought my laptop, and I would recommend buying one if you struggle with the scroll pad.

One small disadvantage I have with this laptop is that it has only two USB 2 ports whereas I regularly need 3 (for my printer, my mouse and my external hard drive) but again this was fixed cheaply when I bought 3 port USB hub, which I plug into one of my USB ports and can then plug other USB devices into this instead.

The battery last about 2.5 to 3 hours when fully charged and it is easy to re-charge. An orange light shows when the computer is charging and a green one comes on when it is completely charged.

I have had no problems with this laptop and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who uses it for work, surfing the internet, playing games, listening to music and watching DVDs.  

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