Compaq Presario 1700

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of the Compaq Laptop Battery   First post by: batterystores#ca

Notebook PCs have traditionally been seen as the preserve of the business user: their high price has more often than not put them out of reach of consumer pockets. But Apple's success with the iBook in home and educational markets has awakened the interest of PC manufacturers in this area, and Compaq's Presario 1700 is squarely aimed at the home user.

First there's the specification - 650Mhz Celeron processor, 64Mb of RAM, 10Gb hard drive and Windows Me, 13.3in 1024 x 768 TFT screen. Then there's the styling - two-tone silver and slate exterior with a shiny Compaq badge - stylish in a friendly, unintimidating sort of way, but without a hint of frivolity. This is a home machine that you wouldn't be embarrassed to take to the office occasionally.

Then, of course, there are the buttons. The trend for additional keys to provide one-touch access to software applications has now spread to notebooks, and you'd be forgiven for assuming the 1700 of the Compaq's moniker is a reference to the quantity of these.

In fact there are only six actual buttons - three either side of the power button. Two of these control the volume, one launches Windows Media Player, one launches your email application and a further two launch your browser and connect to a specific site. The default ones are Compaq's Presario information site and notebook store, but they can be reconfigured.

The top row of the keyboard has 12 function keys and each of these also operates as an application launcher when used in conjunction with a function key on the bottom-left corner of the keypad. Four operate as cassette buttons for media player applications, four operate screen contrast and brightness (though there is no on-screen indication of settings), one is a sleep key, one toggles external monitor display settings, one is user programmable and the last is yet another Compaq web page.

The keyboard has a positive feel, though if you need to look at keys while you type, the bold white on dark grey letters might cause you eyestrain.

Below the keyboard is a very generous and comfortable wristpad area. This houses left and right mouse buttons as well as a disc pad that can be used to scroll the active window.

The Synaptics touchpad tabbed properties panel provides pretty comprehensive configuration including tap to click, corner tap functions, touch sensitivity and edge motion, which keeps the cursor moving in the required direction when you reach the edge of the touchpad. You can even control this with finger pressure, increasing pressure on the touchpad to increase pointer speed.

A 'Palm Check' function helps eliminate accidental placing of the pointer while you're typing. A slider controls its sensitivity and it actually seems to work very well, preventing accidental repositioning, yet not interfering with genuine attempts to reposition the cursor, select text blocks and so on. In any event you can easily suppress taps from the touchpad icon menu in the system tray. The Synaptics panel also lets you reconfigure the disc pad so you can use it for web navigation or to play a keystroke macro.

Connectivity options include 56K modem, 10/100Mbits/sec Ethernet, two USB ports, S-Video out, a parallel printer port and VGA socket. All of these are rear mounted and the last three are concealed behind a rubber flap. The Ethernet connection will be useful for those situations where you want to transfer work files, or for anyone running a home network.

There's no IrDA port, so you'll have to look to other methods of wireless data transfer.

On the left panel there's a Type II PC Card slot, headphone and mic socket.

Two bays on the right of the machine house the lithium-ion battery such as Compaq EVO N410c Battery, Compaq EVO N600C Battery, Compaq EVO N610C Battery, Compaq EVO N620C Battery, Compaq Presario 1200 Battery, Compaq Presario 1800 Battery, Compaq Presario 700 Battery, Compaq Presario 900 Battery, Compaq Presario 1700 Battery, Compaq Armada E500 Battery and a hot-swappable drive. The review model was fitted with a Panasonic CD-RW, and other options include a DVD, floppy and SuperDisk drives.

Two forward-facing JBL pro-stereo speakers provide marginally better than average notebook sound, though if entertainment is your goal you'll need to resort to headphones or even invest in the optional docking station which has an S/PDIF socket. The 650Mhz Celeron CPU and ATi Rage Mobility graphics accelerator are not, however, a combination that will set the hearts of game players racing.

Rather than shipping the machine with a specific software bundle, Compaq allocates points that you can use to buy software of your choice from a selection of productivity, reference and games titles. With the 10 points allocated to online purchasers you could, for example, put together a bundle including MGI VideoWave III, Corel Print Office 2000, Norton Utilities, Norton Mobile Essentials, Quicken 2000 and Tomb Raider III.