Compaq Presario Media Center C310EU

The Compaq Presario media centre c310EU is exactly what it says on the tin, its basically a media centre laptop, so if you love your photos, love your videos and love listening to loads of music. Then this laptop is designed for you.

Because it has windows media centre built in, when you turn it on, it automatically goes straight onto the media centre screen, and it does this very fast too.
From this screen, you can listen ...
...features you would think that Compaq would have given it at least a little more hard drive capacity. So this is quite a bit of a let down.

The screen size of this laptop is 15.4 inch, this makes it a bit more portable, however it would have been nice to see this laptop with a 17 inch screen, scene as its meant to be for watching videos on and with only a 15.4 inch screen this isn't very good for it.

However the screens ... more

The Compaq Presario media centre c310EU is exactly what it says on the tin, its basically a media centre laptop, so if you love your photos, love your videos and love listening to loads of music. Then this laptop is designed for you.

Because it has windows media centre built in, when you turn it on, it automatically goes straight onto the media centre screen, and it does this very fast too.
From this screen, you can listen to all your music tracks, view all of your photos, look at all your videos and even tape and watch recorded TV. However you will need to purchase a TV tuner card if you want to record TV from your laptop. However these can be bought for just £40 and they go straight into your USB port, and you can then record thing straight onto your laptop, watch TV live, pause live TV (on some of the TV cards) and even set it to record at a special time.

This laptop runs on the windows XP media centre edition, however don't let this fool you, this is actually on windows vista too, and whenever you want to get of media centre, you can easily exit and it will load the windows vista normal screens up in no time.
Another thing to notice, is that this also comes with windows vista premium, this has a lot more features than vista basic so it's a case of more for your money.

Then installed ram on this laptop is ok, it has 1GB, which is fine most of the time, however sometimes when in use it struggles with high powered applications and the new games, and when it does this the fan inside can get quite loud. However when in normal use, you could easily have a lot of applications open and the fan cant be heard at all most of the time.

This ram can however be upgraded to 2 GB, so maybe this is a possibility for some people if they like the sound of the laptop, but need it to be faster. However I have never done this, so I can not really say how much it will increase the speed of the laptop, but I would think quite a lot.

Now it's a real shame about this laptops storage. It only has an 80GB hard drive, which is basically the bare minimum these days. However because this laptop has such great media features you would think that Compaq would have given it at least a little more hard drive capacity. So this is quite a bit of a let down.

The screen size of this laptop is 15.4 inch, this makes it a bit more portable, however it would have been nice to see this laptop with a 17 inch screen, scene as its meant to be for watching videos on and with only a 15.4 inch screen this isn't very good for it.

However the screens quality is very good, it features bright view, which is really what it sounds like. It makes the screen that little bit brighter than normal, and than little bit sharper which just makes viewing your pictures and watching videos so much better.

I quite like the design of this laptop, however some people might think its too boxy, however I really like it and think this is a good point.
Its all silver, and I usually go against one colour laptops, as I like to see a combination or it just looks a bit old fashioned. However this laptop really does look great and what I really like about it, is that there is little space around the screen which makes it as more portable as It can possible be.
Don't get the wrong idea, this laptop really isn't flimsy either, and just from closing the lid, you know that it will never break off in your hands.

Altogether this laptop is a really good buy, its great for media use, however it can be used as just a normal laptop too, and its even pretty good for that. However games aren't really that good on it, so if you want something specifically for gaming then I advise you look around a while longer. 

...less