HP Compaq Presario 701FR Review

Overall Rating

Superb Styling.
Amazing Speakers
Excellent touch pad and mouse buttons

No serial port
No infra-red port

The first thing that will hit you about the Presario 700 series laptops from Compaq is their stunning good looks. Someone at Compaq has definitely been thinking long and hard about how to give the laptop computer that vital "wow" factor. And they succeded. I was in a well-known electrical retailer just before Christmas and noted, with a wry smile, the cluster of people gathered round the Compaq laptops there.
They feel good too. Rounded corners to the lid, nice two-tone colouring and that all important feeling of solidity. Nothing flimsy here.
The delights continue upon opening the machine, the clasp itself is pleasantly recessed and operates very positively. Already thoughts of German engineering come to mind. Everything about this laptop has been thought of from an end-user perspective. I have never witnessed a mouse button which operate as cleanly and definitely as on this laptop, whilst at the same time their appearance seems to be completely design-led. The scroll hat underneath the mouse buttons works like a dream as well, enabling vertical and horizontal scrolling in most applications.
The 14.1" is bright and accurate and looks great at its allotted 1024x768 pixel resolution. The keyboard is as good as any I've tried and the sound from the built-in JBL speakers even suggests, from time to time, a hint of bass response. Hard to believe, I know. Windows XP seems to work OK, even on the slightly limited 128Mb RAM and the 20Gb drive is more than enough for most applications. Having a DVD player/CD-RW combo drive is pure luxury. I doubt I'll be using many more pay-per-view systems in hotels now. The write speed is just 4X, but as my writes on location are generally much less than a full disk this is not a problem. In order to find a problem with the 701FR we must look to its given description: Mobile Internet PC. This would seem to indicate that the laptop is geared up for mobile internet use. It certainly fooled me. Whilst there is an RJ45 10/100 network socket and a built-in modem (56K), there is no way of connecting the machine to your mobile phone. Unless, of course, your phone comes with a USB connecter - which I understand is very rare. If the lack of a serial port doesn't trouble you because you can use the infra-red port , think again. YOu only recourse is to locate and purchase a PCMCIA card to provide you with a serial port. This is the only downside to what is otherwise an excellent laptop computer. Andy Curtis (December 2001)