Compaq Evo D500

Richard Price
30 April 2002

The Compaq Evo D500 Ultra-slim desktop PC is impressive for its size and certainly a lot better looking than some of the recent Hewlett-Packard computers I have seen.

Designed for the corporate user the Evo D500 Ultra-slim takes up very little room and can either be placed horizontally or, by attaching it to the supplied stand, vertically --- although this tends to muffle the speaker.

The D500 is about 30 cm square and 7 cm thick (not much bigger than a large pizza box) , weighs 5kg and includes an Intel Celeron 1.3GHz processor and an Intel 515e chipset.

The unit I looked at came with 128mb of memory (upgradable to 512 MB SDRAM), a 20 GB hard drive, and Windows XP Pro pre-installed. It is also available with Windows 2000.

There are five USB 1.0 ports --- the keyboard and mouse use one. There is also an Ethernet RJ-45 connector for LAN connection and a hot-swappable MultiBay that can be used for a floppy disk, CD-ROM or optical drives.

The unit did not come with a floppy or A CD-ROM drive so I could not test how the MultiBay worked. The Multibay is compatible with other Evo notebooks and is a sensible idea.

An optional Legacy Module provides one parallel, one serial, and two PS/2 ports.

The Evo D500 comes with a USB keyboard and mouse. There is nothing special about the mouse, but I liked the feel of the keyboard which also has eight programmable Easy Access Buttons.

Adding the Evo D500 to a network was a breeze. I plugged in the cable, assigned it to a workgroup and was able to install all the software I needed using drives on another PC.

An optional wireless LAN or Bluetooth module make it possible to connect to a network without using cables.

Opening up the cover is easy but there is almost no reason to. The only thing that can be upgraded is the memory or the hard drive.

The Evo D500 is certainly a versatile machine although I did find it a bit slow. Users looking for more grunt may prefer to wait for June when a Pentium 4 version that will also support the USB 2.0 standard will be available.

I don’t think this machine would be useful in graphics intensive or CAD environments, but it would be easy to deploy in customer-service departments where space is a premium.

The Evo D500 does not come with a monitor, but coupled with a flat LCD screen it will look good in any call centre cubicle.

Included in the package is Compaq’s desktop management software enabling configuration, deployment, software updating and management, asset tracking and security, as well as fault notification and recovery.

Except for the quick setup guide, the manuals are on a CD in PDF format, so if there is a problem setting the machine up they will be difficult to access.

The Evo D500 is expandable and flexible and also manages to look good. No wonder Hewlett-Packard wants to buy the company. I just hope Compaq’s innovative culture can survive the HP suits and bean counters looking for a quick profit.

Price AU$1395.00
www.compaq.com.au

By Richard Price, Editor, EnergyME.com

For information on getting a product reviewed email richard@energyme.com