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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OrSin - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
No video benchmarks at all. I'm not saying test BF2, but something would be nice.I think the AMD laptops would show some definate leads in that.
raskren - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
It sounds like you want to see a benchmark where the AMD offerings *might* show an advantage over Intel so you can feel better about *your* company.These are not for gaming. Why should Anand waste his time?
Why don't we do some Geo Metro top speed testing as well?
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Has nothing to do with amd vs intel.Has everything to do with how well laptops do compared to desktops in games.
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I was dissappointed about this too. It was the first thing i looked for when I read this article today on anandtech. I wanted some game benchmarks.Anyone who buys a 600.00 laptop isnt buying it for games, however, I _am_ in the market for a laptop in the 1000.00 range, and I would like to do some casual gaming here and there on it. Severeral of these laptops reviewed share the same video processor as some laptops much more expensive, and good laptop reviews are so hard to come by.
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Bottom line, gaming on integrated graphics is non existant. If you want a gaming laptop, get dedicated graphics.PrinceGaz - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Gaming does not necessarily mean playing the very latest games, and at the highest graphics quality settings. Some people seem to think all that matters with a game is how pretty the graphics are, and discard it when something that looks better comes along. Gameplay is more important to me, and there are plenty of older games that are just as much fun to play as the current hits.I'm sure all of these $600 laptops with their integrated graphics (especially ATI) would be quite capable of playing the top games of the 2001-2002 era very well, and do a decent job with some later titles as well. The only likely probloem is the 256MB system memory which has to be shared with graphics-- but an upgrade to 512MB is the first thing most people would do to these laptops anyway to make them more flexible.
mikecel79 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Why? Who is going to try and game on one of these things?oupei - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
maybe some RTS games or something would have been nice.Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Gaming would be horrible. WHo would wnat to play halflife 2 at 800x600 at 24 frames per second?I have a V2000Z and tried playing some games on it. It sucks. About the only "modern" game that I can play is Civ VI.
I'm pretty sure that older games will run fine on it though.
bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Do you have the x300 ATi or the Intel graphics? I'm thinking of getting one of these boards too.