Hello Mr Slim (Compaq Armada E500)

Member Name: welshwolf

Product:	Compaq Armada E500
Date:	12/03/01 (1385 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see article

Disadvantages: see article

I had an upgrade in work to the Compaq Armada E500 and I was really looking forward to its arrival as the Compaq has quite a good name. The first thing that struck me was how slim the notebook is at only 1.6 inches thick. The only thing then is that you think its light but at 5.7 pounds you know you have it in your hands.

With a 15 inch screen I thought it would be a strain on the eyes but no its quite adequate and the resolution is great given by a AGP 2X graphics with 8 Mb Sdram.

When fully charged the battery life is three and a half hours, which is, more than long enough for meetings etc.

Although the notebook has 128mb of ram I find it very slow in booting especially when networked. The normal time to boot from switch on of power is four minutes and then it needs a good minute to settle down otherwise it just crashes if you try and access programmes.

The machine can come with a 8 speed DVD drive but I ended up with a 24 speed CD Rom, cost I guess.

On the top by the ‘F’ keys there are hot keys for access to the Internet, which can be handy.

This is the first machine that I have used with a touch pad rather than a mouse and the first thing I had to do was adjust the sensitivity as I found myself clicking on all sorts and all over the screen.

The notebook also came with a three year on site support which fior the price was very good.

On the whole other than the long boot up time I am quite impressed with the notebook and for the price can not argue.

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