TEST DRIVE
Armada's brawny but not very fleet

By Simson L. Garfinkel, 02/25/99

ompaq Computer Corp.'s Armada 6500 is a laptop that lives up to the name. With a huge 14.4-inch diagonal screen, a 6.4 gigabyte hard drive, and a 300 mhz Pentium II microprocessor, this laptop packs more power than most desktop computers. The notebook-sized model offers nearly twice the power of my desktop machine, and at $3,850, costs twice as much as a similarly equipped desktop machine.

The Armada 6500 is a slim computer - just 1.3 inches deep - but it's screen is so large that it takes up too much space in your briefcase or backpack. I was constantly being interrupted in cafes and restaurants by people commenting on the large screen.

Despite all its brawn, the Armada felt surprisingly sluggish and unresponsive in day-to-day use. The reason, I suspect, it its hard disk, which kept shutting down to save power while I was using it. I had similar problems with the CD-ROM drive.

The CD-ROM rests in a little bay on the right side of the system. Pull a switch and it shoots out. I wasn't careful the first time I did this, and the drive ended up on the floor. You can slide the floppy disk into the same bay, or slide in a small plastic blank that will save a little weight and some drain on your batteries.

You can also buy a Zip drive for $275. I recommend the Zip; it's excellent backup insurance while traveling with such an ostentatious and expensive machine. Don't keep your Zip disks in the same bag.

The Armada has stereo speakers and a large lithium-ion battery that spans the width of the machine. It comes with a built-in Xircom modem/Ethernet PCMCIA card. The machine ships with either Windows 95 or NT. For some reason, the Win 95 version comes with network drivers for Novell and Microsoft networking preinstalled, but TCP/IP is mysteriously absent. Compaq claims the software is easily installed, and I suppose it is, but shouldn't Compaq try to make things easier for the typical customer?

Ergonomically, I didn't really enjoy using the 6500. The keys don't go down far enough. The buttons on the touch-pad hurt my fingers when I pressed them. The system took an awfully long time - sometimes up to a minute - to wake up after being asleep.

The Armada 6500 is a great status symbol, so I'm sure that a lot of businesses will be buying these puppies for their top executives. But if I had the option of buying one for myself, I would probably pass.

SIMSON L. GARFINKEL

This story ran on page D04 of the Boston Globe on 02/25/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.