All three of the notebooks share the same general port layout, which ends up being pretty decent although nothing particularly special.
At the front of the notebooks, you have:
- Microphone jack
- Headphone jack
On the right side of the notebooks:
- USB 2.0 port
- S-Video output
Moving onto the left side of the notebooks:
- VGA output
- Ethernet jack
- Modem jack
- USB 2.0 port
- PC Card slot
And finally at the rear, you have the power connector for the AC adapter:
Although all of the notebooks in this roundup felt relatively similar in terms of build quality, the Compaq notebooks offered the most rattles right out of the box. The culprit appears to be the hinges used to attach the display to the base of the notebook, which had far more play in them on these Compaq notebooks than on the Gateway and definitely more than on the Dell.
The top and bottom of the Presario notebooks is a matte black plastic, while the inside and outer edges are silver. While the black/silver color scheme can work, Compaq goes ahead and complicates it with a number of other colors or shades of silver. For starters, there are two shades of silver on the keyboard area itself. Then, you have the keyboard, which is this grey color that isn't aesthetically pleasing at all. Then there are the amber LEDs that Compaq uses everywhere; Compaq should know by now that amber LEDs aren't cool anymore. Even their wireless NIC LED is blue. Why couldn't the rest of the machine follow that trend? So, what you end up having is a notebook that is black, silver, "silver-er", grey, amber and neon blue.
The Compaq V2000
The Compaq M2000
The one design decision that Compaq did make good on was the styling of the exterior of the notebook. The rounded corners along the edges of the notebook are very well done, and the profile of the unit is quite modern. With the lid closed, the notebook has a very nice black/silver look, which is almost slimming - until you get an idea of how big these things are. They aren't of a desktop replacement size, but it's tough to actually keep the word "slimming" in the last sentence without cringing.
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johnsonx - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Inspiron 6000 (can be had for $600 on the right day)Acer Aspire 3003
Rudimentary gaming benchmarks. Yes, most current games are almost unplayable on these, but some would probably play fine. I played Dungeon Siege LOA quite happily on my Inspiron 6000, and old Unreal Tournament works great (even UT2k4 is just barely playable at 640x480x16, though very ugly). It would also be nice to see how much better ATI integrated gfx are vs. Intel (and SiS Mirage 2 in the case of the Acer).
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I agree that its long overdue for a laptop graphics gaming review. Using all the common graphics, integrated or not, like the mirage 2, x200m, 700m, 9700, and all the assorted nvidia ones.johnsonx - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
"with the Dell doing absolutely dismally at only 144 minutes. The only tangible advantage we can see that Gateway has in this case is that they use an older chipset"...The tangible disadvantage for the Dell is that they use the old NiMH battery instead of Lithium ion. I have the original version of that laptop, the Inspiron 1000. It's battery life sucked even worse, plus it died after only 5 months.
If you even remotely care about battery life, DON'T buy a dell with the NiMH battery. Don't buy a Dell without a 1-year warranty either.
ksherman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Is there any hope for upgrades in these laptops? Like if I poped the hood off the COmpaq (Smepron of course) and threw in a Turion MT processor... or even a pentium M for the others, is that something doable?Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I know for a fact that the compaqs are upgradable. you can upgrade the processor/ram/hd/optical drive.bloc - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/compute...">http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp...el=2&...IT's TFT XGA, not WXGA.
SilverTrine - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I'm amazed that Gateway tries to charge $50 shipping on a notebook. Anands assertion of $600 laptops is misleading, with shipping and tax this laptop is $800.KCjeeper - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I purchased one of these Gateway laptops a few weeks ago and am very pleased with it. Mine came with the wireless G and I only paid $579.bldckstark - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I am curious as to which company(ies) denied access to test parts. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference, but I wonder who is so embarassed of their product that they don't want them compared openly.bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Something worth noting is that the good battery life on the V2000 is thanks to the Intel 2200BG integrated wireless, not the Broadcom wireless. The Broadcom is what made the V2000z Sempron's do so poorly.