HP Compaq Presario B1200 (HP B1256TU)

Since I first bought the Compaq Presario V3000 over a year ago, I’ve been a fan of HP’s line of laptops. So, after selling off that old model, I went back and got an almost similar but lighter version — the Compaq Presario HP B1256TU.

At a smaller form factor, the Compaq Presario’s 12.1″ screen is as clear and bright as the v3000 series. The screen real estate still supports up to 1280×800 pixels, powered by a embedded Intel GMA X3100 graphics hardware.

It’s lighter too — 1.79kg is just over 4 lbs. It’s not on the top end of HP (the tx2000 series is) but this rig has an Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 that runs at 2.0 GHz with a default 1024 MB (2x512MB) of RAM. The 160GB of HDD space and a DVD+RW puts it on the middle of the scale in storage space.

It’s almost complete in the connectivity department too — 3 USB ports, phone modem, Gigabit LAN port, S-Video out, VGA out, Bluetooth and an SD-MMC card reader. There’s a built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam too.

The external controls for the 802.11 b/g/n WiFi is also on top of the full keyboard along with speaker switch and volume control.

The speakers are now situated at the bottom front of the laptop, along with the mic and headphone jack.

This model is actually an old one and costs about Php90k when it first came out last year. It has since dropped to just over Php55k. It’s a good deal, IMO.

The drawback though is that they come out of the box with Windows Vista Home Premium and they don’t allow a free downgrade to Windows XP. That makes the default 1GB RAM enough to run the system comfortably. Worse, upgrading the memory to 2GB will require you to buy new 2 x 1GB RAM sticks and take home the 2x512MB that originally came with it. Despite the drawbacks, the recent price downgrade still makes it a good buy.