Do you really need another headache?Feb 22 '01 (Updated Apr 01 '04) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line They are riddled with inconsistencies and various individual incompatibilities. The technical support is usually arrogant and assuming. Read on for details...
I have put off writing this review for a while now. I wanted to give Compaq every opportunity to change my mind about their company and their product line, but things have not changed. From my personal experience with their computers and from my customers’ returns and general complaints I have decided to put these findings down for the Epinions community. UPDATE: 09/04/01 My troubles are over! This morning I received a notice from our corporate headquarters announcing the sale of Compaq Computers Corp. to Hewlett Packard. This turn of events does not necessarily make this review outdated since Compaq computers are still being sold and support for them is still undetermined. I will add more as I receive more information on this development. Update: 04/01/04 Here it is almost two and a half years later and the tech support is still in need of a good kick-in-the-a$$. They have done away with most of the proprietary designs so I have to give them credit for that. All in all, I personally don't trust Compaq computers and they will have to go a long way to gain any trust from me again. I have also noticed that since the merger with HP, the HP line of computers seem to be a little less desirable than before. Hmm... wonder why? Reliability The most important thing to consider when buying a name brand computer is the reliability of the machine. No sane consumer really wants to have to return his or her new computer for dissatisfaction of the reliability of the machine. Since July of 2000 our tech bench has seen twice as many Compaq computers returned than any other brand that our company sells. Problems have plagued the Presario line with failures of every kind from hardware to software. Some of the computers have even shipped with the wrong restore CDs. Aside from the return rate is the rate of repair. Our company only accepts computer returns for 14 days, after that the customer must either have the unit repaired under warranty or try to get Compaq to replace it. Compaq will not replace a computer unless it sees three repairs for the same problem. Then it is considered a lemon and by law they must replace it with a new computer. The only saving grace is that Compaq does ship parts rather quickly. Since our location had been in operation we have also noted that the Presario computers are also the highest in repairs and replacement parts out of all the computer brands we sell. The worst of these for repairs are the Configured to order models. These are computers that the customers configure themselves over Compaq’s Internet ordering process. Compaq Presario models of all kinds have had various hardware failures. The most common of these are CDRW, modem and DVD. This doesn't mean that all of them are bad but your chances of getting one that is bad is higher than other manufacturers. Why take that risk? The System Save partition Compaq uses a split partition hard drive in all their computers, even their laptops. The D: drive is actually a second partition on the primary hard drive. The information on the D: drive is used for restoring the C: drive in case of an emergency or catastrophe where the C: can not be booted to or Windows does not operate correctly and can't be repaired. The Quick Restore CD that comes with most Presario models will only operate if the information on the D: drive is in tact and not corrupted. So if you contract a virus and it destroys information on the D: drive you may not be able to restore the original software that came on the computer. Some models do come with a Recovery CD that will restore the D: partition as well as the C: partition, but most do not. Older models would not even allow you to upgrade the hard drive because of this and the fact that the hard drive contained a small invisible partition that stored some information for the system BIOS as well. Proprietary BIOS Compaq does not allow you to make very many changes to the system BIOS. The Compaq drives are plug and play so the BIOS will detect any change in drive configuration or the addition of new drives. There are no special features in most of the Compaq BIOS to... 1) Show temperature of the CPU 2) Support wake on LAN 3) Support wake on ring 4) Manually set PCI/ISA bus 5) Reclaim USB IRQ assignment 6) Reclaim AGP IRQ assignment 7) Manually configure COM and Parallel port settings Also, as I have previously stated, older Presario computers had a small undetectable partition on the hard drive that supplied the BIOS with information. These computers could only have an additional hard drive added, you could not upgrade the primary hard drive because the BIOS would not operate correctly without the information on the hard drive. The BIOS information on the hard drive could not be imaged to another drive nor could it be read by any imaging software. Compaq did eventually change this practice but their BIOS still leave a lot of room for improvement. Longevity I have witnessed the death of many Compaq presarios during an upgrade. Many people have tried to upgrade their Presario only to have it "die on the operating table". For an example, a customer brought a Presario 7594 (only 1 year old) in to have a second hard drive, CDRW and more memory added. After completion of the installations the computer was booted up and the BIOS detected the new drives and the new memory and restarted the computer. After the BIOS restarted, the IDE controller on the motherboard just gave up and would no longer recognize any of the drives. The installation was scrutinized by three technicians and our lead technician as well as management. There was no fault to be found except that the computer just simply failed. This is only one incident in many that I personally have witnessed with the Presario line of computers. Aside from the horror stories at our tech bench, customers who come in to purchase new computers who had previously owned a Compaq usually let us know right off the bat that they do not even want to see the Compaqs. When asked why they usually say they had nothing but trouble with a previous Compaq computer. Incompatibility For the most part this is not really an issue but there are some instances where certain PCI peripheral cards absolutely will not work on a Compaq motherboard. These instances are generally on specific models. For instance, a PCI win modem that works on a brand new Compaq 5000 5BW160 Presario may not work on a Compaq 5000 5BW120. There is no explanation for this other than there may be some glitch in the BIOS or in the PCI chipset that won't allow the card to work on specific models. I do not recall exact examples of specific cards and models but this is a common problem with upgrading or replacing parts on a Compaq. Many times we will have to try a peripheral and if it doesn't work, try another until we find one that does. Technical support Compaq is a great company for customer service except in one area, and that is technical support. I will grant it that every company has some tech support reps that are arrogant and subjective but I have had my fill of Compaq "Technical support representatives" that talk down to my customers like they don't know anything and automatically assume the problem is user error. I had the displeasure of conversing with a Compaq support rep to try to resolve an issue with a customers DVD drive not operating. The Compaq rep was very arrogant and didn't listen to a word I was saying. The problem was that there was no power at all to the drive, the door to the drive would not even open and the customer came in to see if we could repair the drive. We can correct some problems but we can not actually take a drive apart and fix it. Upon checking all the usual trouble shooting like making sure the power cable is plugged in and checking jumper configurations to no avail, I advised the customer to contact Compaq for a replacement drive. The technician that took our call told the customer to give me the phone. I tried to explain that I had diagnosed the drive as dead, no power - no function at all. After going through all the procedures I had already done with the tech on the phone, I asked him to send the customer a new part and we would install it under warranty. The technician got very snotty and proceeded to rustle through pages in a manual. After waiting for him to read out of his manual, he started to have me check for the correct drivers for the DVD. I tried to explain that the drivers were of no concern because the drive was DEAD. If a drive has no power it doesn't matter if you have the right driver loaded or not, the drive will not function! After trying to explain this to the support tech, he got very snotty again and questioned my computer expertise to which I did not respond because I did not want to upset the customer. I followed his advice to reinstall the drivers and upon final reboot, the technician said, "The drive should work fine after you reboot. If you had just let me do my job you would have been done a long time ago." Then the @#$% hung up the phone! Well, the computer finished rebooting and guess what boys and girls? Right! The darn thing was still DEAD as a doornail. No power - No function. This was only one in many incidents like this that I have had to deal with Compaqs technical support personnel. My recommendation With all that I have seen in the last two years as a technician and the previous two as a sales associate, I have to recommend against buying a Compaq computer. If you are lucky you will never have to deal with tech support and if you are very lucky you may even get by with never having any of these problems. In reality, if you buy one of these computers, you probably will. Do yourself a favor and avoid the headache right from the start and buy a Dell, vprMatrix or any other brand but Compaq. Thanks for reading, Gr8ful :-)  |
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