A basic notebook with media ability
Jenneth Orantia02 March 2008, 7:00 PM
One of the first things that grabs you about the Compaq Presario C710TU is its bargain-basement pricetag.
At
$849, it’s the second-most affordable notebook in our recent roundup, and it
distinguishes itself from the cheaper (yet similarly-specced) Acer by having
longer battery life (20 minutes longer, at one hour, 50 minutes) and a slightly
better PCMark05 score of 2,023.
However, in day-to-day use, the
Presario certainly felt the more sluggish of the two notebooks, with most tasks
taking longer than average to complete. As expected for a notebook in this
price bracket, its specs are modest, including a 1.7GHz Intel Celeron M
processor and 512MB of RAM. Paired with the resource-hungry Windows Vista Home
Basic, it’s no surprise to see the Presario struggle — a performance that would
most likely be improved by throwing more RAM into it.
The Presario is also frill-free on the
appearance front, with a nondescript dark-grey colour scheme and the simple
Compaq logo on the lid.
It’s not bad for multimedia, though —
DVD playback is smooth, and the glossy 15.4in wide-screen display is bright and
vibrant, albeit with poor vertical and horizontal viewing angles.