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| Product: Presario 1700T (17XL360 tested) |
Company: Compaq |
| Web: www.compaq.com |
Phone: 800-888-5858 |
| Platform: Windows ME |
SRP: US$1647 (w/ rebate)
Street Price: $1600 |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
Recent trips and the vagaries of the weather have given me time to catch up on some long overdue hardware reviews. I was recently grounded by East Coast storms in some rather uninteresting places. Lucky for me, I had the trusty Compaq Presario 17XL360 to help distract me.
The Presario 1700 series is targeted between the lower-end 1200 series (for home and student use) and the 1800 series (for mobile professionals). The 1700s have unique features that actually make it a near-perfect fusion of the other two lines. The post-iMac styling is also positioned between business and play, with a lovely two-tone gray shell, marred only by the garish chrome Compaq logo.
The 17XL360 I tested came with a 600MHz Pentium III processor, 64 megs of RAM, 8 megs of dedicated video RAM (with ATI 3D graphics chipset) and a smallish 10 gig hard drive. The screen is a very nice 14.1" active matrix TFT, which gives about the same viewing room as a 15" CRT. The screen of the unit does have some problems: colors are not particularly rich and the LCD has a tendency to jiggle near the edges when moved even slightly.
The physical dimensions are roughly 10" x 12" x 1.3", which makes it a fairly compact machine for the features it offers. It is also slightly lighter than most of its competitors, with a base weight of 5.1 lbs., and 5.6 lbs. with one of the drives in place. The keyboard is 95% full-size, with small function buttons, slightly rearranged home/end buttons, and real T-layout arrow buttons.
While the Presario comes with both a 3.5" floppy drive and a DVD-ROM drive, the two share the same drive bay. This means that although it is practically a desktop replacement system at home, when traveling, you have to make a decision about what drive you'll need, or you'll have to carry them both. With both drives and the small power brick, the total package comes in at around 6 lbs., so packing the extras isn't a huge problem. The drive hot swapping (i.e. while the machine is running) is very useful, and much better than those ultra-lights that have external floppy drives. I find that there really isn't much of a need for floppies anymore, so I usually just leave the floppy drive at home. I was disappointed that there was no carrying case included for the floppy drive, so when packing both drives, I rely on the pouches of my trusty Tumi bag.
The DVD is fantastic. For the price, this is one of the best computers to get for its DVD capability and a screen that actually makes you want to watch movies on it. I found that there was nothing better for passing the time on the road than popping in my new Fight Club DVD. While the internal speakers are not loud enough to play for an audience, the "Stereo Out" works just fine for headphones. For those times when you do want to play to a crowd, you can use the "S-video Out" for connecting to a TV.
Other hardware features include an internal 56K modem and an internal Ethernet port for local networking or broadband access. The Presario also has two USB ports, serial ports, and a docking port. While the ports give lots of room for adding extras, one thing noticeably missing is a Type-III PCMCIA (a.k.a. PC Card) slot. These have become so common on laptops that I was surprised to find that it only has a Type-II slot. There is also no infrared (IR) port, which means that printing or transferring files between laptops is very difficult, especially if you haven't brought along the floppy drive.
Battery life on the Presario is excellent, easily lasting a feature-length film or two and a half-hour of work (if you actually decide to break down and be productive). The battery recharges quickly, so even a half-hour between trains is enough to get you to the next leg. Little extras include programmable quick access buttons for Internet, email, e-shopping (dumb), media controls, and LED indicators. The most interesting thing here is the unique four-button "scroll pad" just below the touchpad. This closely resembles a gamepad, but is fully programmable for use with Internet browsing or word processing. Each direction on the pad can be assigned a function, such as scroll down, or "back" and "forward" on a browser. I found this really useful for Web browsing, and a nice feature for some games as well.
On the software side, the Presario comes with Windows ME installed, which is one of the reasons that 10 gigs is too little space. Despite hogging drive real estate, Compaq's selection of utilities and multimedia software are useful and welcome. Optional packages of office suites are available from Compaq.
Despite some corner cutting, the 17XL360 is a very solid machine at a very reasonable price. Other models in the 1700 series are available with larger drives, processor speeds up to 850MHz and added RAM up to 512 megs. Compaq can configure the 1700 series to individual needs, including adding a CD-RW drive. Prices range from around $1250 to $2500. For the mobile professional (or wired vagabond) who needs a little multimedia distraction on the road, the 1700 series is a worthy travel companion.
- Nate Heasely [1/22/01]
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