Great Machine for its price
Written: Jul 29 '07 (Updated Aug 22 '07)
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Pros: Dual Core Processor, 1GB Memory,
Cons: Preloaded Software, No optional Windows XP, No firewire
The Bottom Line: For its price performance ratio, I have no hesitation in recommending this notebook for purchase.
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| e_commentor's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario F572US (GF596UA) P... |
Update on 7/22/2007
I have organized this review somewhat better and can be found at
http://www.diggreviews.com/reviews/notebook/hp/f572us.php
I was looking for a Cheap printer one day when my office printer suddenly broke and I had to purchase a Printer immediately for an urgent work.
When I reached Staples, I found a Compaq Notebook that was selling with a free Printer. The Price for the notebook for $479 after rebates looked reasonably good to me. The Printer was free alongwith the Noteboook. I usually do not like mail in rebates. However staples have a very good system of filing the mail in rebates online using easymailinrebates.com. That prompted me to take a chance to pay $70 for the printer mail in rebates and try.
Specifications -
Microprocessor 1.7 GHz AMD Athlon ™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TK-53
Microprocessor Cache 512 KB L2 Cache
Memory 1024 MB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Memory Max 2048 MB max supported
Video Graphics NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 (UMA)
Video Memory Up to 287 MB
Hard Drive 80 GB (5400 RPM) Hard Drive (SATA)
Multimedia Drive Super Multi 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
Display 15.4" WXGA High-Definition
Brightview Widescreen (1280 X 800)
Fax/Modem High speed 56k modem
Network Card Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN
(RJ-45 connector)
Wireless Connectivity 802.11b/g WLAN
Sound Integrated Speakers
Keyboard 101-key compatible
Pointing Device Touch Pad with dedicated vertical
and horizontal Scroll Up/Down pad
External Ports
* 3 Universal Serial Bus USB 2.0
* 1 VGA (15-pin)
* 1 RJ-11 (modem)
* 1 TV-Out (S-video)
* 1 RJ -45 (LAN)
* 1 headphone-out
* 1 microphone-in
Dimensions 14.05" (L) x 10.12" (W) x 1" (min
H)/1.56" (max H)
Weight 6.6 lbs
Security
* Kensington® MicroSaver lock slot
* Power-on password
* Accepts 3rd party security lock
devices
Power
* 65W AC Adapter
* 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery
Software
Operating System: Genuine Windows® Vista Home Premium
Security and Support: Symantec® Norton Internet Security
2007 (including 60 days
complimentary live update)
HP Total Care Help & Support Center
PC Recovery (Softthinks Restore Solution)
Multimedia:
Vongo
HP PhotoSmart Essentials
HP DVD Play
Muvee AutoProducer Basic Edition
RealRhapsody
Roxio Creator 9 Basic
Snapfish
Productivity and Finance:
Microsoft ® Works
Microsoft® Office 2007 Student and Teacher Edition: 60 Day Trial Version
Internet Solutions:
AOL® Dial-Up
Microsoft® Internet Explorer
Wireless Home Network
Adobe® Acrobat Reader
Service and Support
Warranty and Support
1-Year Limited Hardware Warranty Toll Free Support
1-Year Free Hardware Technical Support
30-Days Free Software Support (Free 90-Day Software Support with Product Registration) from date of purchase
Processor
The 1.7 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-53 processor has a dual-core architecture. The first two letters TK designate the
processor class and mobility level. The second letter indicates the degree of mobility. Higher the number more in
mobility. For example TL-52 will have better mobility than TK-52. The last two digits indicates the CPU performance
or speed. So TK-56 will be better than TK-53.
The processor does have AMD Powernow! power management technology to extend battery life when there is less load on
processor. It also has 2 x 256 MB Level 2 Cache.
In overall it is a fairly fast processor. As you can see in the Benchmarking results produced later, this processor
takes 55 second for Super Pi calculation upto 1M digits as compared to 2 minute and 3 seconds for an Athlon 2200
processor.
Memory
The Compaq F572US has 1 GB of installed RAM (1 x 512 MB DDR2). The Speed is 533 MHz. Although 1 GByte fairly
enough memory, you must note that more than half of it is already eaten up by Vista. I pressed ctrl-alt-del to
check the memory usage. My system was using 615 Mega Bytes of Memory with internet explorer running. I was utterly
disappointed by the way Windows Vista was requiring such a huge memory. I went beck to my desktop running Windows
XP. I found it to be consuming about 130 Megabytes of Memory under similar conditions.
If you open up one window each of a internet explorer, Office, XL sheet, Adobe reader - you are almost close to
exhaust all the available memory. This is fine as long as your work does not involved using some other software
requiring great deal of memory. If you happen to be developer or you use some software that needs great amount of memory you have two options - try Windows XP or increase the memory to 2 GB.
Hard Drive
The HP F572US has 80 GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 RPM). The size of the hard disk is pretty good even if you want
to do some video editing. You must note that not all of the 80 MB is available when you first turn on the computer
with Vista and HP Software loaded.You will find that the disk is partitioned in two parts of 66.4 GB and 8.11 GB.
Out of the 66.4 GBytes of C drive 21.8 GB was already eaten by Vista and preloaded HP Software. In D Drive 1.76 GB
of 8.11 GB was eaten up by what they call recovery software. So the effective storage available is roughly 50 GB.
Still enough for most tasks.
DVD/CD Drive
The HP/Compaq F572US has DVD write that is compatible with both DVD and DVD- disc formats as well as dual-layer
(DL) DVD /-R discs, which can store up to 8.5 GB of data. The writing speeds are 4x DVD-R DL Write Once, 2.4x DVD R
DL Write Once, 8x DVD R, 4x DVD RW, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD-RW, 16x DVD-ROM, 40x CD-R, 24x CD-RW, and 40x CD-ROM. Since
DVD writes are mechanical components they do fail more often. I will have to wait and see if they break in the next
6 months.
Video & Audio
The HP F572US has 15.4-inch WXGA with 1280 x 800-pixel resolution. It has integrated NVidia GeForce Go 6150
graphics/video card, which provides up to 128 MB of shared video memory. It has built-in Altec Lansing speakers for
sound.
The widescreen is good for viewing movie, although I do not use it much for viewing movies.
Networking and Expansion
Now a days all laptops come with wireless LAN in built. The HP/Compaq F572US has an integrated 54g wireless LAN
compatible with 802.11b/g wireless networks. It has 3 USB 2.0 ports one on the right and two on the left side. It
also has one VGA monitor port, 1 S-Video port for connecting to a TV, one headphone jack and 1 microphone jack. I have not used these ports, but they can be useful, if required. It also has an integrated 56K modem (V.90) and an RJ-45 LAN network port (for a 10/100 Ethernet connection).
Operating System
HP F572US comes with Windows Vista Home Premium. You can find lot of reviews on Vista separately. However, I would
like to comment that this laptop has 1 GBytes of memory and it does has the ability to support Vista well, even
though I do not like fact that more than half of the 1GByte memory is eaten by the Vista.
Preloaded Software
HP F572US comes with a lot of softwares preinstalled. It Includes Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office 2007 Student
and Teacher Edition (60-day trial), Muvee Autoproducer, Roxio Creator 9 Basic, HP Photosmart Essentials, HP DVD
Play, and Symantec Norton Internet Security 2007 (with 60 days of Live Update).
Many of these software are I guess for promotional purpose. I believe HP is able to reduce the cost of the Visa by
potentially getting some money from software vendors with these preinstalled software. For example there is a
shortcut to ebay ? - What is this ? - As if it is a separate program or something. It is annoying for puritans but
may makes sense for HP from its business point of view.
Dimensions & Weight
This notebook measures 14.05 x 10.12 x 1.56 inches (WxDxH) and weighs 6.6 pounds. Pretty light weight for the
capabilities it has.
Battery and Battery Life
It's powered by a 6-cell lithium-ion rechargeable battery. The Battery in my notebook states its capacity as 47Wh
at 10.8 Volts.
I charged the notebook completely before testing the battery life. If we click the battery icon on the right, there
are three settings that we can choose -
HP recommended
Power Saver
High Performance
I selected the HP recommended. Also I kept the 802.11b on for web surfing. I lightly used the Mozilla firefox
alongwith the notepad editor while testing the battery life. I got a battery life of 2 hours and 2 minutes under this condition between 100% and 10% of the battery life.
Bench Marking
I tried to run some benchmarking for this processor. I did search for any existing benchmark for AMD TK-53 processor, but I could not find any. So I tried to download some existing free benchmarking software and compared them with my older home desktop and office desktop to compare where it fares. I will updated more information if I happen to add some more benchmarking.
Super Pi Calculation
Super Pi is a simple classic benchmarking software that tries to calculate the time required to calculate the value
of pi upto a given number of decimal places.
Here is the quick result for the Compaq F572US ( with AMD TK-53) processor.
- Not calculated. [ 16K]
000h 00m 01s [ 32K]
000h 00m 02s [ 64K]
000h 00m 04s [ 128K]
000h 00m 11s [ 256K]
000h 00m 24s [ 512K]
000h 00m 55s [ 1M]
000h 02m 07s [ 2M]
000h 04m 35s [ 4M]
000h 09m 58s [ 8M]
- Not calculated. [ 16M]
- Not calculated. [ 32M]
My Office Computer with Intel Celeron 2.4 G Hz has the following Super Pi Result
- Not calculated. [ 16K]
000h 00m 01s [ 32K]
000h 00m 02s [ 64K]
000h 00m 06s [ 128K]
000h 00m 14s [ 256K]
000h 00m 31s [ 512K]
000h 01m 14s [ 1M]
000h 02m 51s [ 2M]
000h 06m 50s [ 4M]
- Not calculated. [ 8M]
- Not calculated. [ 16M]
- Not calculated. [ 32M]
My Home desktop with AMD Athlon 2200 and 256 MB of SDRAM memory gives the following result
000h 00m 01s [ 16K]
000h 00m 02s [ 32K]
000h 00m 03s [ 64K]
000h 00m 09s [ 128K]
000h 00m 24s [ 256K]
000h 00m 55s [ 512K]
000h 02m 03s [ 1M]
000h 04m 34s [ 2M]
000h 13m 16s [ 4M]
- Not calculated. [ 8M]
- Not calculated. [ 16M]
- Not calculated. [ 32M]
Although it is not an apple to apple comparison, it does give some idea. This computer is faster by a factor of
more than 2 when compared to AMD Athlon 2200 . You may like to compare this result with other computers.
PassMark(TM) PerformanceTest V6.1 Benchmarking
Passmark looks another cool benchmarking software. The results for the Compaq F572US are as follows.
CPU Integer Math - 100.1 MOps/Sec
CPU Floating Point Math 586.3 MOps/Sec
CPU Find Prime Numbers - 177.0 Operations per second
CPU - SSE/3D Now - 2168.0 Mill. Matrices / Sec
CPU Compression - 2864.5 KBytes/Sec
CPU Encryption - 21.0 MBytes/Sec
CPU - Image rotation - 442.0 Rotations/Sec
CPU String Sorting - 1739.7 Thousand Strings /Sec
Graphics - 2D Lines - 44.9 Thousand Lines / Sec
Graphics - 2D Rectangles - 23.9 Thousand Images /Sec
Graphics - 2D Shapes - 20.9 Thousand Shapes /Sec
Graphics - 2D Fonts and Text - 80.4 Oerations /sec
Graphics - 2D GUI - 78.9 Operations per second
Graphics - 3D Simple 72.5 Frames per second
Graphics - 3D Medium 15.5 Frames per second
Graphics - 3D Complex 7.4 Frames per second
Memory Allocate Small Blocks - 995.2 MBytes/sec
Memory Read Cached - 818.4 mBytes/sec
Memory Read uncached - 779.7 MBytes/sec
Memory Write - 780.5 MBytes/sec
Memory Large RAM - 112.5 Operations /Sec
Disk Sequential Read - 41.0 MBytes per second
Disk Sequential Write - 35.7 MBytes per second
Disk Random Seek RW 1.64 MBytes per second
CPU Mark - 656.4
2D Graphics Mark - 172,5
Memory Mark - 257.7
Disk Mark - 283.3
3D Graphics Mark - 30.5
Passmark Rating ( Partial, excluding CR R/W) - 308.1
PassMark(TM) PerformanceTest V6.1 Benchmarking for my home desktop computer
I tried to run Passmark benchmark on my home computer with AMD Athlon 2200 & 256 MB SDRAM to see how it fares
against the TK-53. Here are the results.
Pass Mark Benchmarking
CPU Integer Math - 62.6 MOps/Sec
CPU Floating Point Math 321.9 MOps/Sec
CPU Find Prime Numbers - 148.3 Operations per second
CPU - SSE/3D Now - 1257.2 Mill. Matrices / Sec
CPU Compression - 1716.2 KBytes/Sec
CPU Encryption - 12.2 MBytes/Sec
CPU - Image rotation - 154.8 Rotations/Sec
CPU String Sorting - 154.8 Thousand Strings /Sec
Graphics - 2D Lines - 26.0 Thousand Lines / Sec
Graphics - 2D Rectangles - 9.6 Thousand Images /Sec
Graphics - 2D Shapes - 15.3 Thousand Shapes /Sec
Graphics - 2D Fonts and Text - 43.9 Operations /sec
Graphics - 2D GUI - 90.1 Operations per second
Graphics - 3D Simple 24.2 Frames per second
Graphics - 3D Medium 4.46 Frames per second
Graphics - 3D Complex 1.13 Frames per second
Memory Allocate Small Blocks - 1529.9 MBytes/sec
Memory Read Cached - 1004.5 MBytes/sec
Memory Read uncached - 235.6 MBytes/sec
Memory Write - 145.4 MBytes/sec
Memory Large RAM - 6.2 Operations /Sec
Disk Sequential Read - 13.3 MBytes per second
Disk Sequential Write - 13.2 MBytes per second
Disk Random Seek RW 3.04 MBytes per second
CPU Mark - 343.8
2D Graphics Mark - 111.4
Memory Mark - 216.0
Disk Mark - 106.6
3D Graphics Mark - 9.5
Passmark Rating ( Partial, excluding CR R/W) - 169.8
CPU Mark 2.1 Benchmark results
CPU Maek 2.1 is a very simple bench to test the cpu. It performs there tests. Test1 is a Registry operation test.
Test2 is Floating Point Operations test and Test3 is Integer Operations test.
Test 1 : 681.1
Test 2 : 630.3
Test 3 : 3151.3
Final Score : 3297.8
My Office Desktop running Intel Celeron at 2.4 GHz with 512 MB of DDR Memory gives following
Test 1 : 1260.5
Test 2 : 158.6
Test 3 : 2801.1
Final Score : 2871.9
If you are interested, you may like to compare this score with those of others at
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=428632
Few Concerns
Buzzing Sound - Fan or Hard Disk ? - You can feel the vibration under slightly left towards the mouse pad.
I am not sure if this is the Processor Fan or the hard disk rotation as I have not opened the notebook. This is
acceptable as long as the notebook does not create any long term issue.
Heat under Keyboards - You can feel the heat under the keyboards after a while. I believe this is processor.
Again this is acceptable as long as the notebook does not create any long term issue.
No Firewire A lot of video cameras use firewire. I will have to get some USB to firewire board to get my
video camera work with this laptop. I would have loved an additional firewire port.
Missing Plugin - Flash Player I started using Mozilla Firefox. I found some missing plugins in the Mozilla
for the Adobe Flash Player. I had expected that to have been included instead of the thousands of other programs.
Pros
I am impressed by the AMD and the hardware of this notebook at the price it has been offered to me. I will list out
the pros
1. Nice processor for this price.
2. 1GB memory DDR2, 533 MHz memory
3. 80 GB fast SATA
4. Low price - good price performance ratio.
Cons
1. I could not find optional Windows XP.
2. A lot of garbage preloaded softwares.
3. No firewire.
4. Battery life is less, but I am not personally complaining.
Conclusion
After having played with this notebook for a week, I am pretty much impressed with it. If I am able to have all my
sofwares and drivers working with it I will be even more happier. I will definitely recommend it to anyone.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 479
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
e_commentor
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Member: Vikas Shukla
Location: Attleboro, MA , USA
Reviews written: 41
Trusted by: 16 members
About Me:
I am a hardware design engineer. I also provide SEO, Social media marketing consultancy.
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