Fantastic Desktop Replacement
Written: Apr 16 '00 (Updated Apr 16 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Great features and reliability for hundreds less than Dell, IBM, or Gateway
Cons: Funky hard drive partition
|
|
|
| jnelson's Full Review: Compaq Custom 1800 |
I purchased my Presario 1800 through www.costco.com. I highly recommend you do, too. I actually returned the first 1800XL to my local Costco, and purchased another one.
The Presario 1800 is fantastic. Huge 15" screen, 8x DVD, 600mhz P3 with SpeedStep, 128 megs of ram, 12 gig hard drive. All for $2600 through Costco.
The notebook is pretty hefty, weighing close to 8 pounds. It performs flawlessly, and is quite a bit faster than my old PII 333 desktop. The notebook has several great features, including the ability to enter suspend mode by simply touching the power button. This is great, because it takes a long time to shut down and restart this computer. With suspend, you can put it in your notebook bag, travel, then start it back up instantly by pushing the power button again. This feature is especially helpful at the airport, where you must show them your notebook actually works.
I'm a big fan of touchpads, and the Compaq's is great. The best part of it is the internet scroll button. This button, located just under the touchpad, lets you scroll pages of the internet, just like the wheel on your mouse. Really great feature.
It also has Disqplay2. This lets you play a cd without turning on the computer. It has cd control buttons on the outside of the case, and even a little back lit display to show you which track you are on.
Now to the reason I had to return my first 1800XL: the hard drive. My first 1800XL only came with 6 gigs. WARNING: a Compaq 6 gig is really only a 4.5 gig. Compaq has partitioned the hard drive into two different drives. There is the regular C: drive, then a 1.5 gig D: drive. The D: drive is for "System Restore". If something really bad happens, supposedly you can restore all of your files off of this special partition. I hated it, and wanted the extra space back. If something goes wrong, I'll just reinstall the OS and my backed-up files (another thing, Compaq doesn't give you a copy of MS Windows 98, only a restore CD).
I even called Compaq's normally-outstanding tech support, and the technician refused to tell me how to remove the partition. He said it was Compaq's "policy" not to mess with the partition. I was quite put off by that, actually.
Thankfully, I bought the computer at Costco, so returning it was simply a matter of dropping it off at my local warehouse. They didn't even open the box, just wrote me a check.
If you are going to buy an 1800XL, and I whole-heartedly think you should, here are some pointers:
* Do not buy anything smaller than a 12 gig hard drive. Compaq partitions the drives in such a way that on a 6 gig drive, only 4.5 gigs is useable.
* Buy it at www.costco.com. Believe it or not, it is actually cheaper than buying direct from www.compaq.com. Check it out. Plus, if anything should ever go wrong, returning it to Costco is 10 times easier than returning it to Compaq.
Also, since it usually takes 10-15 business days to receive the laptop from Costco, and the price of laptops drops rather quickly, I was actually able to get a credit to my credit card from Costco when the price dropped. Very nice.
For the features and the price, Dell, IBM and Gateway can't touch this Compaq.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
jnelson
|
|
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 3 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.