Watch it compute! State of the art.
Written: Sep 09 '02
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Pros: Very affordable, fast, easily upgradable.
Cons: No I.Link port, somewhat bulky design.
The Bottom Line: I think it's a great computer for the price, especially for an international business student like myself. Or another student, or person who likes computers at all. Yay.
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| reptilzar's Full Review: Compaq Presario 6016US |
Hi folks! A few weeks ago I purchased a new Compaq 6016US from Office Depot. This is my first PC in years, after my great experiences with Apple and their lovely line of PowerProducts. I have gone from the arts industry into business, and felt a PC would help me keep up with technology better. (Tech=good) I didn't have too much to spend (I'm still in college) so I shopped around carefully and found this to be my best deal. But it didn't come with the speakers pictured on the box. I didn't really mind that much because I do have a set of Altecs, but I still think they should have mentioned "speakers not included". Maybe they did and I didn't realize it, oh well. The CPU itself is a rather boxy, squarish affair, but it does look better than the majority of PCs out there (except maybe the Sony VAIO or the new AlienWare designs). Setup was very easy, there was a handy setup guide but I didn't use it (me man! me no need directions! ugh! ugh!) Nothing blew up and the computer worked fine without the guide, everything is color coded (if, like me, you didn't buy the monitor and speakers and printer with the PC, only the keyboard and mouse are color coded)
The computer has an AMD Athelon processor, rated at 1.56gHz. Now, coming from a Mac background, this confused the heck out of me. I don't know what an Athelon processor is, or the differences between that and a Pentium 4 or a Celeron, and neither did the salesperson at Office Depot. I read some reviews online before purchasing, and found it to be a midpoint between the two. I don't do any gaming at all, and all my music editing/photoshop work is done on my Macs. I am mainly utilizing this PC for Office XP Pro, Quicken, and some other random boring programs. Gotta love charts and graphs!
Back to the features, we have 6! USB ports (excellent), two up front and two in back. I was a bit disappointed to see no FireWire/I.Link port as on all Macs, but that could be added via PCI card later. CD-RW drive, DVD-ROM drive (didn't really want the DVD, but it was part of the deal and I'm going to swap it out for a Zip250 soon) 512MB of RAM come standard on this beast, which is a godsend with XP's large memory requirements, and today's Multitasking needs. (I gotta listen to music, play parcheesi, talk to friends, download shareware, all while using PowerPoint!) 60GB hard drive is standard, which is more than enough for my non-media needs, and I can always burn CDs to archive. Ah, technology. Who remembers the day of the 386, 16mHz, with the 20MB hard drive (a lot!), TWO floppy drives, and EGA graphics? Not to mention EMS and XMS! HiMem.sys! Sorry, getting long-winded and teary-eyed here.
The computer's performance is excellent in every application I've used it for, I can't tell a real difference between it and a 1.4 Pentium 4, but I don't have very much experience with those. I haven't used any graphic-intensive or processor-intensive applications yet, if and when I do, I may update this review accordingly. Or maybe I won't, who knows!
I think it's a great value for the price, but if you are a hardcore gamer or designer, you may want to look to the Pentium IVs. (Or a Mac G4 if you're a designer! yea!)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 749
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
reptilzar
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Reviews written: 3
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