Heya everyone! I'm Sarah, a former Uni student who is now looking for employment! My interests inclu...
Heya everyone! I'm Sarah, a former Uni student who is now looking for employment! My interests include Formula one, Music and Movies. :)
Member since:03.04.2004
Reviews:6
Members who trust:5
-^- Introduction -^- As a member of Ciao I’ve been looking to do reviews on objects I’ve had for a while. To try and really give an in depth review over things. Although I know the Compaq Presario 700 may not be on sale anymore this could be a review for people wanting to get it second hand from someone or buying on website etc.
-^- Background Information -^- I bought my laptop in September 2002. I’ve always wanted a laptop just for the actual feeling of owning one. However I went halfs on it with my parents as it was a necessary for me to have seeing as I was also starting university. In total the price was £900. Pricey it seemed but I wasn’t going over £1000. The actual one I wanted was sold out and I really didn’t want to leave without one so I took the Compaq Presario 700. In total I’ve had it for just over two years now.
-^- Specifications -^-
-^- Processor -^- The processor I’ve got is a Mobile AMD Duron(tm) Processor. I’d say this is pretty standard in the types of processor and it simply gets the job done whenever I’m working on my laptop.
-^- Memory -^- The memory is very small compared to some models of laptop that are coming out into the shops now. I have only 112 MB of RAM… not even near enough to run the new Sims 2 game! Which is very disappointing. However as I have mentioned it is over two years old now. The amount of memory is sufficient for most tasks.
-^- Hard drive -^- The Hard drive is 14.9GB… very, very small however I don’t use my laptop for videos or anything like that. At the moment I’ve used just
over half of that. I believe this is to be below average in laptops standards. I’m not reaching any kind of crisis point with capacity. If using broadband to download items I feel this would be very small and you’d never be able to fit much on. Programmes sometimes take a little while to load but I’m used to that now.
-^- Visual and sound -^- There is a standard 14 inch screen. The sound is build in with a speaker running along the bottom of the laptop. The screen is bright and colourful however enlarging any DVD movies it gets a little blurred which is to be expected. This could be the video card installed. The sound quality is pretty decent with or without headphones.
-^- Connectivity -^- They include headphone, microphone sockets down the right hand side with the CD Rom access. At the back of the machine there is 2 UBS ports for printers, web cams etc Along with a connection plug for additional mouse or keyboard and a parallel port for printers. Also there is the socket for the telephone line to connect to the Internet. Also network connections, S-video (tv out) everything seems to be covered pretty well.
-^- Software -^- I got very little. Minimal in fact. It is just Microsoft Windows XP and it comes with Works in which I can’t “work” with at all! It comes with DVD playing software but nothing else apart from that. You can expect to get the usual accessories and Windows Media Player.
-^- Ergonomics -^- The laptop is pretty standard in looks the main dominate colour is black however here is a silver trim around the touch pad and keys area. Once closed there is a circular white and red Compaq logo in the middle. The whole model seems pretty solid throughout. Dimensions are around 31.5 cm x 26.9 cm x 4.2 cm and the weight is around 3Kg as stated on the Ciao website. To open there is a large catch at the front of the machine that easily opens the lid with the screen.
Once open your presented with the screen and it has a silver surround. At the bottom there is lights to indicate your mains power and battery power. The bottom as previously mentions the speakers are built in above that is the main touch pad mouse control which responds extremely well and two large buttons for the left and right mouse keys. There is also a navigator pad below this for scrolling up and down left to right… this is handy if you don’t want to press the arrow keys using the mouse pointer to scroll around. Above the mouse controls is the main keyboard… reminds me of a dell computerkey board as the keys are purely black with white detail for each of the letters etc. Above that is 6 silver buttons. The main power on switch is located in the middle either side to the right is a volume button and to the left a button which links to Compaq web page, one to open outlook express and another to lead to a search engine… that’s what they did when I pressed them!
The main power cord is attached well to the back of the laptop. It connects to a transformer that then leads to the mains socket all in all there are two connecting wires for this lap top and one for connecting to the internet. However if you are like me you may need another one to actually connect to the phone socket.
-^- Performance -^- From the start I’d say it takes a good 3 to 4 minutes for the system to boot and load everything up. Once up and running you can easily access any software you are wanting to use. The Internet performance is standard. I have a simple dial up connection and it works pretty well for me. Dial up is as usual and I use BT Yahoo as my ISP.
Battery performance… when I first got it I used to use the battery all the time and it usually lasted around two to three hours. However see the section below on “problems”
Other issues… the CD rom works well for watching DVDs… can be a little jumpy over time. I am not really a big games player on CD rom however I do have the original sims game which works fine without sticking or freezing. However as mentioned above I daren’t even try the Sims 2 purely because I know I won’t have the capacity to run it. As for standby or hibernate mode I don’t use this now purely because all the usage the laptop has had.
While in use the noise factor is minimum, only when the fan starts to cool down the machine is when it makes a little noise. However after long usage the machine gets rather hot and it did cause me problems… see below.
-^- Problems -^- Through out the time I have had this laptop I’ve had to send it back twice for repair. One time was extremely tough as they insisted that my one year warranty had run out! And it hadn’t I still had 10 days to run on it and they weren’t going to honour it… in the end they did but it was extremely stressful at the time as I thought I’d have to pay out to fix it.
The problems I had occurred were that it started shutting down the screen going to blank and then I’d have to restart again… after a while it did it and it just didn’t come back no matter how much I tried. I was very annoyed because I had no time to back up files etc and had no idea if I would lose them or not. It had to be sent away to be fixed which happened very promptly. I was informed it was the fan that had broken and the machine had overheated. That was replaced and it may need to be replaced again if it still gets as hot as it does at times.
The second problem was with the connection lead to the mains connection, it meant the machine kept turning off whenever I moved the wire. That had to be replaced as well.
The third problem I had was using dodgy software… my own fault however it made the whole system crash and I had to do a master reset losing everything I had on the machine… and I carry a lot of stuff which is getting updated consently for websites etc so it’s quite annoying having to back up all the time. Anyway tip is don’t used dodgy software on this laptop!
The other problem I have regarding the machine is that the battery is completely gone. I can’t turn it on at all now under battery power. So it completely runs on mains power. The battery is completely dead and I believe I can’t have it replaced now. The battery went after about a year.
I took out an extended warranty on the machine that has another year left to run on it.
-^- Conclusion -^- In the end this is my first laptop computer and I’d like it to last me as long as possible even after I’ve finished university until I have a decent job for me to up grade the machinery to something else. It is a standard laptop however it does has its problems that I highlighted above. I also think it was a little overpriced when I bought it and your probably going to get it a lot cheaper. Overall this is a good laptop to have for a first starter to laptop systems but if your wanting something good to run games and other software that requires high memory and processing power this is not the laptop to buy.
Advantages: Good size keyboard, most keys are in standard places (like desktop keyboard) Disadvantages: Not suitable for traveling (not very durable), battery life when using windows
fitzy75 22.12.2005 (22.12.2005)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Compaq Presario 700
Advantages: Good size keyboard, most keys are in standard places (like desktop keyboard) Disadvantages: Not suitable for traveling (not very durable), battery life when using windows
fitzy75 22.12.2005 (22.12.2005)
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Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Compaq Presario 700
Advantages: Good Looks; very good WiFi adapter; Widescreen; Card Reader; Awesome sound; nice keyboard Disadvantages: Very Poor Battery!!! ; Overheating
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