The Winner: Lowest-priced Notebook

Compaq Presario 2100 (2183 AT)



At Rs 47,490, Compaq was the second cheapest notebook we reviewed (cheapest being the Hyundai Mlife), and it was this, more than anything else, that made it emerge as the Editor’s Choice. Otherwise, it is average in performance and features. The Presario 2100 ships with Mandrake Linux, so you may not be able to use some of the shortcut keys, buttons, infrared port, etc. For this you will require manual configuration.

Considering that the laptop has a Celeron processor, its performance is almost as good as some of the P4 based laptops probably because of its onboard ATi mobility graphics. Its battery backup time is average coming to an hour and 45 mins. The notebook has features such as, a FireWire port, and two Type II PC card slots. Plus, it has a unique scroll surface adjacent to the touchpad. The quality of speakers is also good. It is also the only notebook in the shootout to have a serial port. However, it has some limitations, such as its weight of a little over 3 Kgs, which makes it the heaviest notebook to carry around in its category. Other features such as CD and floppy drives remain standard.

The notebook comes with a one-year warranty. Overall, a great buy considering the low price and interesting features. 

Ingram Micro Vesta



Ingram Micro is a highly recommended buy because of its great performance and features. The only place where it looses to the winner Compaq, is the price. It weighs slightly lower than the Compaq, and is also thinner than it. 

The notebook has decent specs, with a P4 1.8 mobile processor. It comes with a DVD combo drive, a hard drive capacity of 30 GB, and a floppy drive. Connectivity options are also good, and the notable ones available are, the IrDA and FireWire ports. There are three USB ports, out of which two are v2.0, plus there are two Type II PC card slots, which are sufficient for any future expansion. The touchpad has a good feel and has an extra scroll button.

On the performance front, the notebook did very well in battery backup, but gave average performance in most of the benchmarks. Its batteries lasted for about 2 hours and 17

mins.

The notebook also has some interesting software like WinDVD, Nero, and Viso Express.