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Carolyn Ong

You can tell before you lift the hood that this is the best notebook Compaq has made in a long time, and it is not wearing a cheap, plastic chassis.

 Full marks to Compaq for staying away from this season's fad looks - either silver or cheesy transparent - chosen by every other notebook in the market.

 Instead, Compaq opted for practicality. The Armada M700 is dressed in a magnesium-alloy casing, making it about 40 per cent more durable than the old Armadas.

 The M700 is in matte-black and has a silver tab on the front with 'Compaq' embossed in red lettering - not a bad attempt at giving it a touch of class.

 Compaq officials said the M700 was designed to beat IBM's venerable ThinkPad 600, which, according to IDC and Compaq, is the runaway leader in the thin-and-light laptop segment for the corporate market.

 Compaq was so serious about doing a good job it hired Ziba Design to create the new Armadas.

 Does the M700 measure up to IBM's one-year-old product?  The ThinkPad 600 wins . . . though this is a really good effort by Compaq and I have to admit I like it.

 This must be the first decent notebook I have reviewed from Compaq since its Contura days.

 The Armada M700, along with the even more petite M300 which will be covered in a later review, result from the notebook technology Compaq inherited when it merged with Digital, which five years ago was the first vendor to produce a notebook less than 2.54 centimetres thick.

 Unfortunately, Digital's HiNote Ultra was ahead of its time because users then equated thin and light to compromised performance.

 However, times have changed and users want their notebooks lighter and thinner and do not expect compromises in performance.

 This machine, about 2.54cm thick and weighing less than 2.27 kilograms, is running a Pentium II, 400 MHz chip with 64 MB Ram (expandable to 288 MB Ram), ATI Mobility Pro AGP 2X graphics with 8 MB SDRam, an integrated 58K modem, all the necessary ports, video and audio outlets and a 14.1-inch TFT display.

 So what's the problem? Why is it not as good as the ThinkPad 600?  Firstly, the ThinkPad has a better display. IBM gets most of its TFT displays from a Japanese source, which also supplies Toshiba. The TFT screens on ThinkPad notebooks use an IBM-developed anti-glare screen technology.

 The difference it makes to the comfort of my eyes is tremendous - I am paranoid about gradually losing my sight due to time spent staring at a poor display.

 Secondly, the trackpoint on the M700 is not as sensitive and intuitive as that on the ThinkPad 600, due to proprietary IBM technology.

 In fact, it is going to be really difficult for Compaq to beat IBM in the look and feel department because IBM has a large pool of people with PhDs working to improve the ThinkPad's ergonomics.

 I have visited an IBM research laboratory in California and met the maker of the trackpoint.

 In terms of sound, though, the two machines are quite evenly matched. The M700 comes with a DVD-Rom whereas this is an option for the ThinkPad 600.

 The DVD-Rom on the M700 supposedly is hot-swappable with the floppy-disk drive.

 However, I found it difficult to replace without ripping off the black plastic covering the mouth of the drive.

 Yanking it out of its place was so hard I just gave up. So I do not know if the hot-swapping function works.

 The battery also gets hot when you are charging it - hot enough to change your mind about resting it on your thigh.

 Overall, the performance of this machine really impresses. It is preloaded with Microsoft Windows 98 and Office 97.

 It is a good buy, though the price tag is a little daunting at $31,800.

PROS AND CONS Product: Compaq Armada M700 Notebook Price: $31,800 for the unit reviewed Pros: Impressive performance, good-looking machine with solid alloy case Cons: Screen is a little too glaring, even after tweaking the controls REVIEW 



Nothing plastic about M700's attractions