Compaq Armada! I see no ships (Compaq Armada M300)

Member Name: grahamdavidcook

Product:	Compaq Armada M300
Date:	12/12/04 (3138 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Value, Tiny & Light, Good Screen

Disadvantages: Battery only lasts 1-2 hours, spares are a bit pricey

We bought the Compaq Armada M300 as a Christmas present for our 13 year old daughter, mainly for 2 reasons, to run Microsoft Encarta to enable her to do her HOMEWORK! And to run the Sims, she’d been asking for this for about 2 years and we were loathed to load it on the family’s computer for fear that nobody else would get a look in!

The Computer, we found on E-Bay for £145 plus £18 postage, we were not particularly looking for a Compaq, but rather any Laptop that had a processor that met the Sims minimum requirement ( that being PII 300).

The Compaq far surpassed that! And so we went ahead and made the purchase via Paypal on Sunday night and much to our delight it arrive at 7.30am on Tuesday morning.

The only problem, now was that the standard Compaq Armada comes without any external Drives and so we set about finding a CD Drive, we looked at USB Drives from such places as Currys etc. but these looked bulky, Ugly and you need a floppy drive to load the Software drivers! as it was running Windows 98, it probably would have managed hadit been newer and running windows XP.

On searching the internet I found a wonderful supplier called Laptopbits (www.laptopbits.co.uk surprisingly!) and we bought a brand new Mobile Expansion Unit complete with DVD Drive for £95 + Vat and only £2.50 postage!

This unit fits onto the base of the laptop increasing the height of the closed unit from 2.2 CM to 4.4 CM still highly portable.

The Computer is obviously slower than a new PC, but for £250 in total we are extremely happy with the purchase, and to see her face on Christmas morning was worth every penny.

NOW THE TECHNICAL DROSS!

PROCESSOR
Pentium PIII 500 MHz

DISPLAY
TFT Active Matrix 11.3 inches

HARD DRIVE
6.4 GB IDE standard (upgraded to 11.2 GB)

MEMORY
Supplied with only 64 MB can be upgraded
to a maximum of 320 MB ( upgraded to 192 MB)

VIDEO MEMORY
4 MB ATI Rage LT Pro card

FLOPPY DRIVE
None supplied (DVD Drive supplied with Mobile Expansion Unit)

DIMENSIONS
26.5 x 22.5 x 2.2 CM (adding the MEU Increase the height to 4.4 CM)

WEIGHT
1.4 KG (3LB) or 2.5 KG (5.5 LB) with MEU


All in all this has been a good purchase and is better than starter laptop, it can be used for gaming to a degree, newer games will need faster processors and better sound cards etc.

But for word processing (HOMEWORK), the Sims, Encarta ie all the things we bought it for it is a super little computer.

This computer also incorporates a network card and modem for connection to the internet or a Home network and also has one USB port and one PCMIA slot.

Looking around suppliers on the internet you can buy this laptop complete with a MEU for around £350, if this is complete with any warranty I would still say that this is pretty good value when you consider the price when new was £1885 plus VAT!

Typical teenager! now 2 weeks into the new year she is now asking if we can buy arouter and let her have internet access on her laptop, so she can use Ciao in her bedroom!

Summary: