Well, I have just been away to my Nan and Grandad's with the A31 (of course! ), and my Grandad pulled out his rather old Compaq Evo N110 laptop. It has 128MB RAM, 20GB hard drive and Windows 2000 Professional. It came with Win 2K but my Dad came and upgraded it to XP years ago and it was so slow and so loading with rubbish that had been put on over the past 5 years or so, my Grandad and I decided to format the hard drive and re install Windows 2000 using the Compaq Recovery CDs, I have some pictures of the Compaq and my ThinkPad embedded below...

Before I had even turned on the Compaq, I saw a difference in screen size. We mesured that the N110 (the Compaq) was a 14" and that my A31 is obviously a 15".

Well, I had finally booted up the Compaq and discovered that it only had Win 2K SP2, I downloaded SP4 for my Grandad and that is what you can see being installed in the pictures.
All those swirly lines on the A31 screen btw are my attempts are covering our Mini's Regestration plate!! It's not the screen!
It's my editing on Photobucket.

Difference in size with the lids closed.

My IBM was sitting on a book when this shot was taken, meaning it was SEEMS a little fatter, , but when not sitting on a book they are both almost the exact same in thickenss (the A31 is a little slimmer!)

Which screen would you rather see when you boot up your laptop?

The same question again...which screen would you rather see when you boot up your laptop? XP or 2000?

The Compaq Evo N110 was designed for Windows 2000 Professional and has a 1.0GHz Intel Celeron processor...

...whereas the ThinkPad A31 was designed for Windows XP Professional and has a 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4M processor.

So there we go, just some pictures to show you the difference between these two laptops. I'm around my Nan and Grandad's house again next week to finish off mending the Compaq (install another RAM module, 1x 256MB) and I know they have a newer (2007) Fijitsu-Siemens laptop with Vista Home Premium on it... so I'll post some more comparison shots

A31

Man I love the looks of the Evo series.

I used to have a N610c and man I loved that laptop. I hope all things work out for your grand dad.

Thanks for your support I'm staying round there Monday-Thursday and in that time I hope to upgrade his HDD from 20GB to 40GB and upgrade his RAM from 128MB to 384MB. I just hope it works, too!

I'm taking the A31 again so I'll upload some more comparison shots! The Evo N110 does look good doesn't it! Especially when you remember that it is 10 years old!!

Believe it or not, my A31 with XP is much faster at booting up than the Evo N110 is with Windows 2000. Though that may be becuase I have 1512MB RAM (1.5GB) in my A31 and my Grandad only has 128MB RAM in his Evo!!

Nice pics!

The Evo N110 looks amazingly a lot like my old Evo N610c discussed in the following thread, down to the silver Compaq logo on the lid and the blue touchpad buttons:
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=73888

But the N610c is even closer to a Thinkpad - it has the classic Thinkpad 7-row keyboard layout and a Thinkpad-compatible trackpoint.

The 128MB RAM is definitely a major bottleneck. But in addition, based on my experience, Windows 2000 takes a bit longer to boot than Windows XP even on the same machine. Once the machine has finished starting up though, Windows 2000 feels a little snappier than XP (again, on the same machine).

1.0GHz Celeron is actually not too bad for XP. If you can max out the RAM to 576MB (64MB onboard + two 256MB sticks), you may want to consider upgrading to XP. Microsoft support for Windows 2000 will end this July, so after that it won't be safe to go online on this machine.

Well, if I can get my RAM to work in this N110 and Grandad says that he can get a cheap stick of 256MB from eBay for something like £10 I believe, then yes, I think we would upgrade to XP. This machine did have XP on it, with just 128MB RAM and it was so slow and so loaded with rubbish we just re installed 2000. My Nan and Grandad tell me that it was like watching paint dry when scrolling down a page, though I assume that this is just becuase the appropriate video driver was not installed.

It isn't safe to go online with this machine anyway - it has Internet Explorer 5.0 (which is no longer supported) and I cannot find a download link to Internet Explorer 6.0 anyhwere on the internet!! We upgraded to Media Player 9 though, which was the last Media Player that Windows 2000 supported. We cannot get the Windows Update for Windows 2000 to go becuase we have Internet Explorer 5.0 which isn't supported anymore.

dr_st, I'll have to do an "on top of each other" picture like you did there in your thread. The N110 doesn't have a trackpoint but the touchpad is exactly the same. I just downloaded the service manual for the Evo N110 from the HP Website to see how to replace the hard drive (as we are thinking of upgrading it from 20GB to 40GB) and it seems like you have to remove the keyboard to do it... we'll see how it goes! But I can tell you this, replacing the hard drive in my A31 is much easier than it is going to be in this Evo!

"How times have Changed - Part Two"
This time, I have pictures of A31 and a 2008 Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile with 1.7GB RAM, Vista Home Premium and a hard drive with a capacity of 110GB.

Pictures:

A31 on the right hand side. The Fujitsu does support a PCMCIA card, however it has in-built Wi Fi, so it doesn't need one.


A31 on the right hand side again, I think the screen size of the Fujitsu is a 13.0" or a 14.0".


The Esprimo Mobile is a lot slimmer than the A31 but then again, the A31 is older and it was designed as a desktop replacement, whereas this Esprimo Mobile was designed to be as portable as possible.


It has Vista Home Premium and a 1.8GHz (same speed as my P4M processor!) Dual Core.

Oh, and some more pictures of the Evo and the A31 (sorry, forgot to upload these earlier!! )


The Evo is definitely smaller than the A31, no doubt about that.


Another angle of the picture above.


Difference in thickness - A31 on the right again!


The Evo N110 has a COA for Windows 2000 Professional, whereas my A31 has a COA for Windows XP Professional. The massive 'hole' in my A31 (right hand side again) is where my battery should go, but I do not use my battery.

That white tail in the background by the way is my Nan and Grandad's three year old Samoyed dog!!!

I doubt that I'll be able to get any more photos for a little while as I am not round my Nan and Grandad's until March and that is for a special ocasion and I won't be taking my ThinkPad or messing around with their laptops!!!

A31

You love that A31 don't you?! I liked the pics and was wondering who's gray tuft that was

I think it's f*n awesome that you and your Granddad are sharing your computer experiences!

Thanks for sharing

Well, I've spent ££££££ on it since I've had it! Yes, I do like it a lot! It would be a terrible shame if it died.

He knows a lot about computers as well, he also has 2 desktops!

These are great photos! But personally, I don't like the looks of the Compaq. The Fujitsu is ok, but I find IBM had a great timeless design. Your "old" A31 looks still way better than the rest and could even stand with modern designs.

Cheers!

Thanks Tasurinchi!

I think the Compaq looks all right, actually. I don't like the positioning of the PCMCIA slot though, I like it on my A31!!

It isn't a great looker. It is also terribly slow, even though it has 1.7GB RAM and a Dual Core processor. It belongs to my Nan, she used to own that Compaq but it left sitting around for years until Grandad played with it again! Becuase it has Vista, the UAC is on, and I really wanted to disable it, but becuase it doesn't belong to me, I didn't really feel I could do it!

+1 for this! IBM ThinkPads have (had) a great design, even though my laptop is actually very dirty, it looks quite clean in the shots!

Thanks!! Though I have to agree, even with that mssing left arrow key which really annoys me! It also starts up quicker than the Compaq and the Fujitsu and feels much snappier than both of the other laptops once it has booted.

By the way, we tried upgrading the RAM to 384MB by adding another 256MB's. It's a no go, my old 256MB chip out of the A31 that I replaced with a 1GB chip didn't fit in the Evo N110 - the 'slot' was in the wrong place. I downloaded the user manual for the Evo from the HP website and saved it to a CD as we then set about upgrading his HDD from 18GB to 37GB and re installing Win 2K, but once we had loaded the manual on my A31 - we discovered to remove the HDD you had to:
.Remove the SCREEN!!!
.Remove the keyboard
.Remove various parts of bodywork
and many more parts. Instead of trying to upgrade his HDD and probably end up breaking his laptop, we just left it.

This is what I love about ThinkPads, so easy to work on! To replace the hard drive in my A31 all you have to do is undo a screw under the PCMCIA slot and pull, and the hard drive is out (which is why I've changed it three times!!). I don't think the Evo N110 was really built to be the 'upgrader's laptop' unlike the ThinkPad was!!

Thanks for all the nice comments by the way, and I am glad you approve of my photography skills!!

Of course that won't work. You need PC100 RAM for your Compaq, whereas your A31 uses PC2100 or PC2700. And to be perfectly safe, get a low-density 256MB PC100 stick, which has 8 chips on each side, i.e. 16 chips total. High-density 256MB PC100 sticks may not work.

Regarding HDD replacement, I owned three Compaq laptops before that were even older than yours (233MHz PI, 300MHz PII and 600MHz PII, and they used easily accessible HDD bays just like the Thinkpads. No need to remove anything else.

Did you have to remove the entire screen to get to the bays?? Removing a whole screen just to get to the hard drive(s) seems a little OTT to me but there you go.

I do not own this Compaq, my Grandad does, but I'll pass this information onto him.

I have just remembered by the way, that we have a laptop that lives in the car, so when it next gets bought in from the car, I'll take and upload some comparison photos of that and the A31. I think it runs Windows XP Pro, like my A31, which would be a nice change as the other too laptops in this thread run either Win 2K or Vista.

True. It's not only easy, it's also well documented from IBM/Lenovo. I was checking how to change the keyboard and upgrade the RAM in my Dell D630 from work, and it's not that easy. Plus I had to google around to find the instructions. Dell seems not to bother about documenting the way to upgrade parts.

Nope. Just unscrew one or two screws and the whole HDD bay slides out, just like most (but not all!) Thinkpads. You have an unusual Compaq. Perhaps low-end Compaq laptops were often like that. (Yours is low-end because it's Celeron.)



Of course Dell publishes detailed service manuals for their laptops, just like IBM/Lenovo and HP. Click on the "drivers and downloads" link, enter the service tag, and look for the "manuals" link in the left column. That's the same number of mouse clicks as getting manuals on Lenovo's site.

With the help of Dell's excellent manuals, I was able to completely disassemble an Inspiron 4100 and an Inspiron 600m as quickly as I tore down a T42.

Well, looks like I missed something in the web. Thanks for the hint, will try it soon...

The DELL manuals are excellent when it comes to help you reassembling/replacing parts, but while they are very easy to view online, downloading/storing is not as efficient, seeing as DELL does not offer a single PDF, but rather a collection of HTMLs, PDFs, each covering something else.

Consider here for instance:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... /index.htm

Clicking on "Service Manual" takes you to a different page, where you have further links to individual subsections. The setup and quick reference is separate. The system board replacement instructions are yet another PDF. Bottom access panel? Another PDF. If you want to download all this, you cannot get a single file, but have to get this collection of PDFs and a pile of HTMLs in a ZIP file.

Additionally, they don't seem to publish a detailed list of components and part numbers, or at least I haven't found it. This information is very useful if you want to order parts, and so far I haven't found any place where DELL has it.

In this sense, I much prefer the approach of IBM/Lenovo/HP, which have the maintenance manual and list of service parts in a single file, easy to download, transfer, use and search in.

The user manual for this Compaq Evo N110 was fairly easy to understand and could be downloaded as one PDF file from the HP website.

I think that my Compaq is a low end. You could have 10GB, 15GB or 20GB HDDs and those were your choices (all very small, when you consider you could TP's with 30GB or 60GB HDD's), all came with Windows 2000 Professional, and I think only the Evo N110 with the 20GB HDD (the one that I have) came with 128MB + the 64MB onboard, I think the others just had 64MB RAM. If it's low end because it has a Celeron processor, if it was higher end, would it have an Intel Pentium II or III Mobile processor?

I haven't found such a list either. The closest thing is the "system configuration" link, which lists all the parts for your specific laptop. Then you can go to the "parts and upgrade" page and plug in your laptop's part numbers if your want to buy those parts.



The Evo N110 was sold in 2000 and 2001, and Win XP came out only in late 2001. At that time, 20GB was considered enormous. The Thinkpads available at that time were the A21*, A22*, T21 and T22. The vast majority of these Thinkpads had either Win 98SE or 2000, and their HDDs ranged from 10GB to 32GB.



Configurations with Celeron are cheaper.

When I said your Compaq was probably a low-end model, I was just trying to guess why it had such a weird design. I am not familar with the Evo N110 and don't know if it was supposed to be a budget line or not.

Guessing from this description (http://www.ukclearancecentre.co.uk/258- ... ounds.html, baring in mind that this one has 300MB RAM and Win XP Pro, so NOT original spec), I am assuming the N110 was a fairly high (remember this is 2000/2001) model. You can also tell from this (below) that it was a fairly high business model:



Maybe this is why it is hard to upgrade the hard drive. If Compaq shipped it with an 'enourmous' 20GB hard drive (sounds tiny nowadays!!), they thought that their customers wouldn't have to bother upgrading it, therefore saving money by not making the hard drive easily accessible to easy to change, becuase as it was large already, it wouldn't be neccessary to upgrade it.

The N110 now has 512MB RAM (Win 2K only detects 384MB), so on Sunday I am going round to my Nan and Grandad's house with my XP Pro CD and my Office 2003 Pro CD and we are going to install XP on this machine and Office 2003. We cannot put any more RAM in this machine though as 512MB is the most it will support. If it all go wrong, ie XP is still too slow (though it should be OK on a 1.0GHz processor and 512MB RAM), we can always put it back too 2000 Pro... Is the most RAM that Windows 2000 will see is 384MB? This Evo definitely now has 2x 256MB chips.

Also, just to say, my Grandad also has a Dell Dimension with Windows 98SE. It did have Windows XP Pro on it, but it was so slow and it just stopped working one day, so my Grandad just re-set it back to 98SE. I went round there last night just to see how things were going (mainly to see 98SE again and to see the Evo N110!!). Was interesting seeing what 98SE is like again, last time I saw it was back in 2005 or 2006, I think. He also wants me to install XP Pro on the Dell again, but I suggested having Windows 2000 on the Dell as I think XP Pro on a Pentium III 950MHz and only 384MB RAM is a bit rubbish really, it will be slow. However, as he has two HDDs in the Dell, I can create a dual-boot between 98SE and XP.

I will post pictures of when XP is finally on the Compaq, and I may be taking the A31 again so we can have more comparison shots!

Definitely not! I ran Win 2K on a Gateway desktop with 512MB RAM for many months. Download the freeware MEMTEST86 to check your RAM for errors. You want to run the MEMTEST86 for at least 5 rounds.



For most "grandpas" and , "grandmas", their computers get slow over time because of the accumulation of junk files and spyware, and the HDD getting fragmented. Teach him to defrag the HDD once a month or so, and to run CCleaner (freeware) once a week to get rid of junk files and most spyware. But of course, adding more RAM would help further.

An elderly colleague of mine has given me two desktops (one of them an IBM NetVista M42 with 2GHz P4 and 512MB RAM) for free over the last few years because they were getting too slow. In both cases, a clean install of Windows fixed the problem.

I was thinking it may be faulty RAM or he may have accidently bought 1x 256MB and 1x 128MB... I'll download it and burn it to a CD to check this.

This desktop had AutoCAD 2000 on it, which is a big program that may have slowed the whole thing down - it also had hundreds of photos stored on it. I suggested that he moved them onto his most powerful machine (which has XP Pro, 3GB RAM, Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT) but he said he'd already done it and they were on the Dell for backup purposes.

I'll have to clear that Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile's hard drive as well, as Vista Home Premium on that is terribly slow. Maybe a good defragmenting would do that laptop some good? If I had that laptop, I'd be installing XP or 7 on it like a shot. Whilist I do like Vista Ultimate, I do not like Vista Home Premium. I have used several computers with it and I find it terribly slow, even the specs are near enough the same of that of my HP dx2200 MT which runs XP Pro and Vista Ultimate on a dual-boot. Vista Ultimate is fine on that, so I don't know why Vista Home Premium is slower...? Baring in mind that the Esprimo was sold with Vista Home Premium, 1.7GB RAM and an Intel Pentium 4 Dual-Core processor running at 1.8GHz.

I have used CCleaner and can recommend it. He currently doesn't have a firewall now with 98SE, he told me on Thursday. I think it is becuase the only free anti-virus that will work with 98SE is ClamWin.

I am hoping that this is the case for the Compaq and this Dell as well. I'll post back tomorrow once I've installed XP Pro on the Compaq.

A31, one more thing. After installing XP, you must tweak it to optimize performance. There are lots of tutorials on the internet, but the most concise list I've seen has been made by our own jdhurst:

viewtopic.php?f=58&t=42850

Scroll down to his May 20, 2007 2:46 pm post.

I would add:

1- Creating a XP install CD/DVD using nLite to get rid of bloatware
2- Running XP-Antispy after the installation (freeware)

The latter, apart from impeding XP to "call home", will also tweak the system for more performance and stability.

My 0.02 cents...

Thanks. You can also go into System Properties and select the "performance" option in something (I forget now!) which changes everything to classic theme etc. I am sure he will appreciate me doing this as I think he has grown to used to the classc Windows style, with machines running 98SE and 2000 etc! I noticed that on his most powerful machine, his ASUS desktop, he has changed Windows XP to classic theme. Thanks, pianowizard for the link! Very helpful!

Yes, but that is just a part of a long story. Me thinks the main issue is getting rid of the bloatware, which can be done via nLite. Then tweak the system using other tools.

The link provided by pianowizard is an excellent start. I think there are lots of software nowadays that will do the job for you, (like cccleaner, xp.-antispy, nLite). Try googling "XP Tweak" to get a list of current software available...

I'll be installing XP on the Compaq today. I'll post some pictures when it's done!

EDIT (15/3)
Well, I got to my Nan and Grandad's house and completely forgot to bring my camera!! But anyway, the Compaq is now running XP Pro with SP3 on a 950MHz Intel Celeron with a 20GB HDD and 384MB RAM. It currently has Media player 11, IE8, Office 2000 Pro SR-1 and when I left, AVG Free 9.0 was being installed on it. We have it set to classic theme to speed things up and we have not installed un-necessary componments in Office 2000 such as Publisher and PowerPoint and we didn't bother to install Outlook as my Grandad uses Outlook Express 6.0 as his E-mail program anyway. I am assume that one day I will come and upgrade Office 2000 to XP or 2003 (I doubt that machine is powerful enough to run Office 2007) but for time being, Office 2000 Pro SR-1 will suit him fine, I think (I still use it on the A31 would you believe??)