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Compaq Armada E500 Review
Compaq Armada E500 (together with M700) is the most popular and widely available model among refurbished Compaq laptops. It is also in the top ten of the most often sold second hand notebooks. These two are enough reasons to familiarize yourself with this laptop a little better.
Armada E500 laptop with its big screen, full-size keyboard and 3-spindle, highly upgradeable and customizable design could be classified as desktop replacement system. Armada E500 is also a good example that desktop replacements don't need to be heavy and bulky. By placing weight-saver bezels in both available bays, you can reduce its weight to less than 6 lb (2.7 kg) making it a convenient travel companion.
There are two major versions you can meet on the market, differing only in standard equipment. Armada E500 is the better equipped version, with faster CPUs, more capacious hard drives and bigger screens than its cheaper sister - E500S.
Both versions are based on Intel 440BX chipset. They come with either Intel Celeron Mobile 700MHz or Intel Pentium III Mobile 650Mhz - 1GHz featuring SpeedStep technology. All processors work with 100MHz FSB and up to 512MB of PC100 SDRAM memory installed in two SO-DIMM slots. Standard amount of memory that was installed by manufacturer was 64MB or 128MB.
E500S comes with two kinds of displays - TFT 13.3" or 14.1" both featuring maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 x 16M. E500 models had additional option of 12.1" or 15" TFT displays. The biggest screen can work with up to 1400 x 1050 x 16M resolution and is a best choice if you think of using laptop for everyday work instead of desktop computer. All displays are good quality and clear and must be considered as a strong point of this laptop.
As E in the model name means "expandable", Armada E500(S) is equipped with two modular bays - MultiBay and DualBay. MultiBay can accommodate range of standard optical drives like CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or CD-RW, second HDD 5GB - 20GB, LS-120 or ZIP-250 drives or additional battery. DualBay is designed to accept floppy disk drive or another additional battery. Modular bays enable you to adapt the laptop to your current needs. If you want to use it as desktop replacement, you can power it from external AC adapter and use the bays to hold optical and floppy disk drives. On the other hand, if a long battery life is more important for you at the moment, two additional batteries can take the place of drives extending the battery life period to over 9.5 hours.
Every E500 or E500S laptop is equipped with either mini-PCI V90 56kbps modem or a mini-PCI combo card - 10/100Mb/s Ethernet with V90 56kbps modem. There is no integrated support for wireless LAN or Bluetooth although if you need it you can plug appropriate external PC Card adapter.
Armada E500(S) features typical set of expansion ports and interfaces. Two PC Card interfaces can accommodate two Type-I/II or one Type-III cards. Both support CardBus but only the bottom slot supports ZV. There is only one PS/2 port where you can connect mouse directly or both mouse and keyboard through Y adapter/splitter. Port replicator connector is used to connect the laptop with a docking station to avoid plugging and unplugging your external devices every time you take the laptop away. There is also RCA Composite Video-Out port and a set of typical ports like parallel, serial RS232, 4Mbps IrDA, VGA and one USB 1.1. Taking into account that today most external devices, including mice, use USB, only one USB port is a serious limitation.
Big disadvantage of Armada E500/E500S are its input devices. Most people consider the TouchPad as far too sensitive, what causes unintentional cursor moves and mouse clicks. Keyboard also isn't the best what you could expect. It is rather weak and not many people would consider it as comfortable.
Although on first sight it may looks solid, E500/E500S casing is made of very low quality plastic that does not protect the display enough and is very vulnerable to cracks and various damages. That's especially important issue when buying second hand computer, which was in use for several years. Many refurbished laptops resellers declare that their warranty does not include mechanical damages like scratches or cracks. One other inconvenience is that it gets hot very quickly even if not under heavy usage. It doesn't lead to crashes or hardware damages, but may be a little annoying.
Looking at its capabilities and equipment it is offer worth considering. Most customer opinions about this product are positive, although every customer review contains some minor complains. Don't forget that durability is a very weak point of this item and that it definitely does not belong to top quality products. I advice you to buy it only if you are sure about its condition, mainly mechanical, because you may be disappointed with it in other case.
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