The process of powering up the Presario 1800 for the first time was very easy, as, once the battery snaps right into place and the AC power adapter is plugged in to charge the battery for the first time, all that was needed to do was press the power button. Once I got through the Windows setup wizard, it was ready to go! This is much easier than having to put together a system piece by piece and then having to do a clean installation of Windows, yadda, yadda, yadda... which is what I'm used to doing in setting up a new system. It is also one of the main benefits of going with a big-brand model--just plug it in and go!

The Presario 1800 comes bundled with Windows ME. Personally, I would have liked Windows 2000 for its better stability and more advanced features, but Windows ME works fine for me too--even better than Windows 98, which is contrary to what many claim. Compaq also includes Microsoft's Money 2001 and Works 2000, which affirms their point that this is targeted for the home user, as well as McAfee Virus Scan for virus protection. Personally, I do not like using virus scanners since they slow down one's computer considerably, so I chose not to install it.

Setting up the Internet was not as simple as I had originally thought it to be, however. Every time that I tried to open up Internet Explorer, it pops up with a registration for Compaq.NET, Compaq's internet service, and, if I chose to skip it, it closes down Internet Explorer also, preventing me from going online through my network. This, as you can imagine, can be quite a pain, especially for a user like me who is used to just plugging in a network cable and having everything automatically configured. This is, however, only a software configuration problem on Compaq's end, but is still a very annoying thing to have to deal with. I can't even remember how I got around this little problem, so, I'm afraid that I cannot document it here for you.

Now that I have all the set out of the way, it's time to test each part of the laptop!

Display
First up is to evaluate the quality of the built-in 15" LCD monitor. The pictures that it outputs were very sharp and clear and colors were very vibrant, but, like all smaller (< 17" LCD's), which is something that I realized recently, it also has some contrast and viewing angle problems. What I mean is that it has a very narrow viewing angle; only a few degrees off of the optimal angle will bring some terrible color distortions. Another side effect of this narrow viewing angle is the fact that the screen seems to never have the same contrast level when comparing the top and bottom of the screen. For example, while the top of the screen seems to have a perfect contrast ratio, the bottom will always be too bright. This is quite a big annoyance, but is found in mostly all smaller LCD screens, like I mentioned before.

Another big factor in determining the quality of a LCD screen is by counting the number of obvious dysfunctional pixels; the 15" TFT on the Presario 1800 had none that I could notice, which is excellent!

Video
The performance of the Rage Mobility 128, which is the graphics controller that is powering the graphics of the Presario 1800, was surprisingly very good for a mobile video controller. Plugging in a separate monitor, it is capable of outputting very clear images up to a resolution of 1280x1024 and with only a very minimal loss of quality at its highest setting, 1600x1200. What also surprised me was its gaming performance. With its native support for OpenGL and Direct3D, I was able to test out my full suit of games on Presario 1800. I found that the Presario 1800 could run Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed at 800x600 with 32-bit very reasonably, and Quake III: Arena with 800x600x16 at a speed of 31.6 FPS (demo001)! That is very reasonable for a laptop-I can't wait to be fragging away with Quake III: Arena while traveling in an airplane!

On to: Powering Up -Continued