Made
for the e/SMB market, it's a BTO just for you.
Tech Lab Staff Review,
written by Chuck Brown
December 11, 2002
Announced on October 5th, the Evo N1015v represents a rather bold move by Compaq into the SMB (Small/Medium Business) market, with an unheard of price for this segment. At $899 (US) for the base model, the Evo 1015v puts a first class notebook in the hands of any businessman, and the competition is nowhere to be found. How does Compaq do it? This notebook is "BTO" (built to order) and only available online from Compaq.
While there are cheap "off brands" from various neighborhood computer chain stores, online dealers, or discounted "last years models" from the big boys (usually requiring rebates), no one came close to the N1015v in price or features on our internet search of October 30th, 2002.
So how have we liked
reviewing and using the Evo 1015 for the last Month since the initial
"first look" we did? Surprisingly interesting, how’s
that for a tease. So read on.
Compaq has apparently settled on a relatively standard "look"
or design for their notebooks. A year or two ago, it was really confusing
with what seemed like two or three different notebook packages. For
the most part, this package design, shared also with the Presario notebooks,
is an attractive compact (no pun intended) and functional notebook.
The JBL Pro stereo speakers, located in the leading edge of the notebook are exceptionally good sounding for music. There has been quite a bit of debate about where notebook
speakers should be
located. Some computer magazine pundits declare that on the top at the
LCD screen hinges is best. But, ask any speaker engineer and they will
tell you that if you have small speakers, put them in a location that
will reflect the sound along a hard surface. Since most notebooks (hey
folks, they aren’t "laptops" anymore) are usually used
on a desk, kitchen table or a fold down tray table, the front edge makes
the most engineered sense.
The LCD/flip top front latch is one of the best in the industry. It’s easy to slip you finger under to open the notebook and this is one that will never break from normal wear and tear or even abuse.
The 13.3-inch
XGA TFT LCD (enough initials?) screen is better than average for it’s
size. Lets face it, most companies that put a 13" LCD on a notebook
to save money do not pick a premium one. I still have a three year old
Compaq Presario 1200 XL125 that came with four bad pixels, and that was
the best of five brand new notebooks at a BestBuy store (some had as many
as six bad pixels). The maximum display setting for the 13.3-inch display
is 1024x768 pixels.
"The
Athlon 1400+ is an amazingly speedy little processor. In our Calculations
benchmark test,......"
Since
this is a Built To Order computer, I would upgrade to a 14.1-inch TFT
display for the additional $100.
The Evo N1015v we tested has an AMD Athlon XP 1400+ (1.19GHz) and only 128 MB (1024 MB maximum) of 266MHz DDR RAM (16 MB’s is used by the ATI Radeon IGP video graphics chip set).
The Athlon 1400+ is an amazingly speedy little processor. In our Calculations benchmark test, the 1400+ had an index of 441, compared to a 476 for an IBM ThinkPad T-30 with an Intel 1.8GHz Mobile P-4!
In our Tech Lab’s Drystones, Whetstones and MFLOPS tests, the little 1400+ did a remarkable job of keeping up with or surpassing Mobile P-4’s of 1.8GHz or 2.0GHz flavors. So much for Intel’s clock speed claims!
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