Packard Bell Easy One Silver

...much I came across the Packard Bell 3120 Laptop Computer in Curry’s, it was selling for £1399.95. On first looking at it I knew it was the one I was going to buy, my step dad pointed at others but I had seen the laptop for me.

A short lad in his plight to sell, and my stepdads haggling powers we found a very good deal. £997 plus £300 for an extra 3 years insurance on top of the 18 month manufacturer warranty. I must say I was very ...
...distorted.

The Packard bell 3120 weighs in at 3 kilo’s which is quite light for a computer containing all drives unlike the Sony Vaio with which you need a separate CD drive and Floppy drive. The laptop (when closed) is 1 ¾ inches thick, and 21 cm long. Overall I would say the laptop length is just bigger than the size of a piece of A4.

THE SPEC
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The Packard bell comes with the following ... more

(sorry I made a small mistake, I paid £300 for 3 years extra insurance and not £200 for 2 years insurance)

I’ve not been here for a while and I must admit I am a bit rusty at writing these opinions. Please make any suggestions you can for me to improve this opinion.

In the past few weeks away from this place I had been very busy typing up numerous college assignments and coursework’s. The amount of work I had to complete meant that I had to spend a lot more time than normal sitting in my bedroom at my desktop computer, typing to some music or to the sound of those repetitive cockneys in Eastenders, man! I got slightly depressed. That’s when I decided that I needed to buy myself a laptop.

Without searching that much I came across the Packard Bell 3120 Laptop Computer in Curry’s, it was selling for £1399.95. On first looking at it I knew it was the one I was going to buy, my step dad pointed at others but I had seen the laptop for me.

A short lad in his plight to sell, and my stepdads haggling powers we found a very good deal. £997 plus £300 for an extra 3 years insurance on top of the 18 month manufacturer warranty. I must say I was very pleased with the final price and wanted to get it home.

Oh! You want to know more about the laptop, well here we go.

First of all the laptop comes in silver covered plastic case, not tacky as you may think. It is very attractive compared with other laptops to say the least, the 4 Watt speakers are front mounted and are positioned so that when you close the lid, the sound (if you want to play a CD) is not distorted.

The Packard bell 3120 weighs in at 3 kilo’s which is quite light for a computer containing all drives unlike the Sony Vaio with which you need a separate CD drive and Floppy drive. The laptop (when closed) is 1 ¾ inches thick, and 21 cm long. Overall I would say the laptop length is just bigger than the size of a piece of A4.

THE SPEC
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The Packard bell comes with the following specification

An Intel Celeron 1.2-Gigahertz Processor
256 Megabytes of PC133 memory
A built in Combo 8 speed DVD/ 8 speed CD-RW drive
Floppy Disk drive
20 Gigabyte Hard Drive
2 PCMCIA type II slots
14” TFT Reflective screen
Windows XP Home Version
Built In IR (Infra-Red) port
2x USB slots
Parallel, serial and external monitor connections
Built in modem
8-Megabyte SiS 760 Video and TV Out

So What’s It Like Then?
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The Processor, running at 1.2 Gigahertz gives excellent speed to your applications in both booting and running them. The Celeron can cope with everything you throw at it, and coupled with Windows XP or 2000 you can bet that the laptop will avoid crashing.

Memory, the standard memory for the laptop is 256 Megabytes, some of which (8 Mb) is shared by the built in SiS 760 Video card. I would say that this is probably one of the laptops downfalls, but I have been told I can increase the amount of shared memory by getting a BIOS upgrade. Also you can add a further 128 megabytes of RAM upto a potential 384 Megabytes of RAM.

14” Thin Film Transistor (TFT) screen, the screen is great, it runs at a maximum 1024 x 768 @ 60 Hz. When using the DVD drive to playback movies the screen is very responsive without any faded edges or blurry playback.

20 Gigabyte Hard Disk Drive: lots of space for all my MP3’s and saved college documents.

The DVD/CD-RW Combi drive provides a great option for entertainment when out. Just last week I used it on the train on the way up to my grandma’s watching a Blade DVD. The people on the train were amazed and started to watch it. The battery for this laptop has a good life span; in fact I normally get 2 Hours and 45 minutes whilst watching DVD’s. Also this drive features a CD-RW drive running at 8 speed. To write a 700 Megabyte disc it would take 9 minutes.

Ports, the ports included are and IR (Infra-Red) port, 2 PCMCIA slots, Monitor out, TV-Out and 56K Modem.

Touchpad, even though I’m not a fan of the touch pad the one on this laptop seems to respond very speedily compared with older laptops I have used. To be truthful I am using a Packard Bell USB Wheel mouse. A touch pad will never really rule over the generic 2 or 3 button mouse.

Included Software
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The software included is very impressive, as standard you receive:

Windows XP Home Edition: With this version of Microsoft’s Operating system dos is left behind and now runs on Microsoft’s NT (New technology) and runs very fast. Unlike the days of blue screens when programs had used up all the memory, XP allocates each program a section of memory which means that while you use XP you probably wont run into too many crashes as you did with Windows 9x.

Microsoft Works: All your favourites Microsoft Applications. Includes MS’s alternative spreadsheet and database applications.

Microsoft Midtown Madness 2: Whoooo! U guys at Microsoft went crayzeeee makin this one, NOT. The game is ok but to say Madness is a slight exaggeration. Maybe if it were called “Driving quite fast around san Francisco” I wouldn’t be too let down. But it’s free and the graphics aren’t too bad.

Atomix Mp3 player: An Mp3 player erh! That’s it.

Video and song maker: a very advanced version of e-jay. This lets you create multi-channel hip hop and dance tunes and couple them with a video. The videos are easy to create and don’t look that bad even if you’re a total novice.

Other Software:

Prassi CD and DVD creation software
Easy CD creator
Windows Movie Maker
Norton Antivirus 2002
Design Pro 2002

Conclusion
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With a 1.2 Ghz Processor, 256 MB Ram and DVD drive you will agree that the laptop sports a very powerful spec. The fact that the great playback of DVD’s, and good graphical performance in games makes this laptop a true entertainment system. Not to overlook the sharp, crisp and smooth TFT screen which allows for a truly great experience when surfing the Internet and image editing.

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update

In my spare time I have found every fault I can on this model and compared it to a laptop my dad owns (another Packard bell) and a pentium 266 my friend owns. I have now owned it for over a month, around 6-7 weeks in which I have had time to help you make your decision on buying a laptop by pointing out this models faults, these points could help you make a decision.

1) The first fault or bad point I noticed was the fact that the CD-Writer drive can be opened whilst you are writing a CD. This means that accidentally opening the drive can wreck a cd. I thought this was a fault on my laptop but it seems that as laptop drives are not motorised they are not controlled the way a normal desktop drive is. For example in a desktop if you open the drive whilst writing a cd, the desktop can stop the tray opening. In this case I just make sure that I stay clear of the drive when writing a cd. A good point to this is that the drive is located at the side and not the front so there’s not really a big chance of you opening the drive. This is also a problem with my friends laptops with the same thing happening.

2) No LAN/Network connection, I didn’t mention this first time around as I was supplied with a free PCMCIA network card for free. The lack of this card would mean no connection would be possible at work or even for connection to broadband internet. When I first saw the laptop I questioned the man selling it to us about the lack of networking, luckily they sorted it out for me. Obviously this may present a problem for you but the newer replacement model for this one (3128) comes with a built in network (rj-45) connection port. You might also want to know that the only laptop I could find that came with an in built LAN connection was my tutors Samsung Laptop.

3) 8-megabyte graphics, everybody wants to play games and as far as this laptop goes it can struggle with some games. Being as crafty as I am I have already took my laptop to a friend who did me a favour and increased the amount of memory shared and therefore I now have more graphics memory. One very bad point is that Packard bell have fixed the shared memory to 8 Megabytes, which is a bit of underhand tactics to overcharge for the newer model with more video memory. You shouldn’t worry too much though, without any changes the 1.2 Ghz and 256 Mb Ram helps shift most games along without a problem. Most laptops struggle with video memory as there just isn’t that much space for such luxuries.

You might not believe me but I have spent numerous hours comparing this laptop with others that my friends have, and there is not much I can nitpick at.

Good points

Here are a few more good points for you all, the build quality is none too shabby. In fact I have already dropped it, onto wooden flooring from about stomach height (by accident). Take into fact I’m just less than 6 foot tall that’s about a 3-½ foot drop, my laptop escaping with a slight scratch to the lid. I was very impressed especially as a mate dropped his only to find out the LCD had cracked from the sofa, the Liquid Crystal running on to his keyboard.

Software Installation is very smooth, take into fact that now Windows XP runs on NT Technology you can run the compatibility trouble shooters, to iron out any problems with older programs. I have also synced my laptop to my PC using an infra red adaptor without any problems to send and receive word documents and MP3’s.

Overall the build quality and the speed make up for the downfalls this model has. Just in case you do want a Network card for your laptop, I have seen them in Micro direct for £31.
 

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