Who'd like a £1000 bookend? (Compaq Presario 1200 Series)

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Compaq Presario 1200 Series
Date:	28/02/04 (1835 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Budget, Ease of typing

Disadvantages: Shocks, Shoddy monitor, Speaker positioning

The Compaq Preasario 1245 is now an old machine. I bought mine in late 1999. You'd be lucky to find one in the shops, but they are cropping up quite frequently on Ebay or second-hand. Hopefully you will learn from my mistake...

I bought the Compaq Presario 1245 to replace my old laptop, which had been a shop-built number.

To begin with, I was fairly impressed. The extra buttons below the touchpad (Easy Access Buttons, apparently) are of variable use. It's nice to have the external volume control so easy to get at, and the scrolling buttons are good too, although I had trouble getting them to work with some programs.

The Internet buttons are less useful. Short-cuts to the 'Internet Zone' apparently. Remember that this machine was designed when the Net was still new and scary. I don't know how everyone else configures their desktops, but I've got tray icons for both Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. To have these dedicated buttons screams the word 'Gimmick' at me.

Moving swiftly on, whose bright idea was it to put the computer's speakers below the keyboard? The extra space makes typing fairly comfortable, but when I play music CDs, I get an unwanted vibrato effect from the movement of my wrists. My old machine had speakers up by the monitor, and still had enough space below the keyboard for comfortable typing.

Continuing the persecution of the speakers on a more serious note, I still occasionally get mild electric shocks from them while typing. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem. I hope not. It's probably just a loose wire somewhere, but it's really the last thing you want from a portable computer, especially these days when I know several people who surf the web from the bath...

The machine did come with a fairly impressive array of software. Windows 98 was still fairly new and shiny when I bought the Presario, and Word and Works came installed as
standard. Obviously all this stuff has been superseded by newer versions now, though.

I'd had this laptop for just over a year when real faults began appearing. A line of phosphors (or something, I'm not a hugely technical person) went on the screen and the battery life became comical, despite my careful attention to the 'battery care' section of the manual. After just a year, the battery was lasting about ten minutes. It goes without saying that replacement batteries are no longer available.

As for speed considerations, I have to say I was always unimpressed. My old laptop had exactly the same processor, and ran noticeably faster. The Compaq takes a small eternity to boot up, for one thing. The monitor was also of a much higher quality with the first machine. Considering I paid exactly the same price for the two machines and bought the Compaq a whole year later, this was very distressing.

The computer's suspend function is also erratic. It often switches itself back on after an interval of anything between ten minutes and several hours. When you actually try and take it out of suspend, you're often greeted by a blank screen and no option but to go for the power button.

My dead monitor and erratic battery and possibly lethal speakers convinced me to take the machine back to PC World. I paid for three years' full cover, and I'm glad I did. If they can't fix it, they will replace it, and I was just praying they'd replace it with a different model.

Unfortunately, they were just able to repair the machine. The screen was replaced, but the battery and speaker static problem was not addressed. Something with which I was not at all impressed.

Then, just weeks after having a complete overhaul, the monitor began playing up again. Something was wrong with that weak hinge, and the screen occasionally blacks out. It is just about possible to get a display if you twiddle the screen mani
cally, but this is not really what you want from a supposedly sophisticated piece of computer equipment. Stuff that only works when you hit it is SO 1980s...

Back to the present day. I do still use the machine, as it's the only laptop I have. I use it as a semi-portable computer, setting up a desk when I am either at school or in hotels and need to do some word-processing. This is about all it's good for, to be honest. It was always sub-standard, and now it's obsolete as well. I suppose, if you have a particularly studious child, this thing would still be good for GCSE coursework, but don't pay more than £100 for it.

Poorly-designed and poorly-constructed, almost the only redeeming feature of this computer was its price. It was the cheapest machine in the shop when I bought it. Unfortunately, it just goes to prove that you really do get what you pay for. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

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