My Arctic Piece of Trash
Written: Sep 07 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: At the time of purchase, it was a great deal.
Cons: sluggish, freezes often, HEAVY
The Bottom Line: Do not buy a Compaq unless you enjoy having your computer freeze on a daily basis.
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| ktchai's Full Review: Compaq Presario 5724 (135846-003) PC Desktop |
Let me warn you now, I am disgruntled. I lovingly nurtured this computer for a year, and then it turned on me.
My dad bought me this computer for college two years ago. We searched high and low (within the confines of the military base exchange of course) for the perfect computer, and this is what we came up with. Even at the time of purchase it wasn't the fastest machine on the market, but it was sufficient for my needs and it came with a great software package (although much of it unnecessary for me) and a printer. I don't remember what we paid for it, but it was definitely less than $1200 and probably closer to $900 or $1000. We drove it to college, and my dad carried it up the three flights of stairs to my room. I was easily able to set it up by myself because all of the wires are color-coded. So far, so good.
At first I was in love with my new computer. You have to understand that I spent most of my childhood with an Apple IIc (ha, I bet no one remembers those). I never heard of Windows or anything PC-related until 8th grade, years behind my peers. We did not buy a new computer until I was in the 9th grade, and, well, that was six years ago...you can imagine how high tech that one was.
So, first year of college, first year with my Compaq, and I'm loving it. For a couple of months. And then it started doing goofy stuff, like freezing for no reason. Control-alt-delete only worked sometimes, and the computer would not let me use the power switch to turn it off, so often the only way to unfreeze it was to unplug it. And then I would restart it and it would go through checking the system for errors, with the lovely message that I could prevent this from happening if I properly shut down (well if the computer would LET me shut down then maybe I WOULD...). And if I left the computer on for too long, it would become very very sluggish. But I ignored those goofy things because I had my very own computer that I did not have to share with my sister.
Then came the inevitable end of the school year. Daddy wasn't here this time to help me move, so I had the pleasure of packing up the Compaq myself. And that's when I came to despise it. The CPU is HUGE. HUGE and HEAVY. Far too huge and heavy for it to have any business in a college dorm. I struggled with maneuvering it back into its box. I struggled with the monitor as well, severely bruising my finger after an unfortunate slip. I balked at carrying it down three flights of stairs and finally recruited some guys to help with that.
The Compaq went into storage over the summer, and the rest seemed to do it some good. When I restarted it the next fall, everything ran smoothly and more quickly than before. For about a week. And then the constant freezing and illegal operations errors and general sluggishness began again. Perhaps I overloaded this delicate system (12Gb hard drive, 96Mb RAM, and a grandmotherly Celeron 500Mhz processor) with my mp3s and my digital photographs and everything else essential to the student's computer system. Whatever the cause, my Presario decided that it hated me. I packed it up at the end of the year with the intention of never opening it again.
Of course I did open it again at the end of summer. This time it didn't even pretend to like me, performing lousily from the first reboot. I'm calling it quits for good now. I'll be buying a laptop within the next week, and it will not be a Compaq. I have heard too many horror stories about Compaqs of all varieties, and my fragile heart (and weak strength) cannot take another beating.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: 401-500
RAM: 96
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
ktchai
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 1 member
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