Decently priced, full-featured, need TLC
Written: Dec 14 '03
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Pros: Price, very large screen and great all-rounder
Cons: Need TLC, did not come ready (need patches to run properly)
The Bottom Line: If you are an experienced user, this laptop will both perform and exceed your expectations for all your needs. Recommended.
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| lll0228's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario 900US (470037-278)... |
I bought this laptop refurbished from Computer4Sure.com at $799 shipped half a year ago, in one word, cheap. It came in brand-new condition and it has been working great ever since. It has a powerful AMD Athlon M 1700+ processor with 256Mb of RAM installed. Graphics is handled by an ATI Radeon IGP 320M chip, which, for 1024x768 @ 60Hz (fixed for LCD) is extremely capable. I do not play games, but using movies as a benchmark, I can say that the chip performs admirably with the large 15' LCD, which is bright and uniformly lit. It also comes with a very handy DVD/CD-R burner. I am particularly pleased about the inclusion of an IR port, synch-ing your PDA has never been easier!
The only bottleneck for performance of this laptop would be its harddrive, but that is not uncommon unless you have a high-end laptop equipped with 7200rpm harddrives (generally laptop drives run at ~4000rpm). I have since upgraded the memory to 512Mb (a $30 investment) which reduces the use of the harddrive as Virtual memory, improving the speed immensely.
All these good things said, it is not without problem. As other reviewers have mentioned, the laptop stopped booting after about 2 weeks. As an Electrical Engineer myself, it took only a short while to realize the problem, in laymen terms, the "battery" driver was bad. All that was required was the complete removal of all power source (AC adapter AND battery), wait for a few seconds, plug it back in, and voila, it's back to life. There is a software patch on the Compaq support website that addresses this issue. And with that patch, that problem has never surfaced again. You will also need to have all the latest patches from Compaq's website before this toy runs like a charm. However, once you are done, it is a really amazing piece of machine.
Windows XP Home is a decent improvement over 2000 even though it still has some stability issues. Keep it updated automatically with Microsoft and it should be fine. Linux users take notes, though, it is an absolute pain to put Linux on this machine, there are simply too many non-standard hardware that is not supported.
Overall, I am pleased with my purchase and my friends have all been drooling over the big screen and at the current price it is hard to beat. Unless you are a hardcore gamer, this laptop is capable of all business/home related tasks and more.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 799
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
lll0228
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Very technically trained with an artistic twist.
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