Great Laptop But Don't Travel With It!
Written: Feb 11 '05
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Pros: Great price, amazing crisp display and great sound.
Cons: Heavy and bulky, low battery life
The Bottom Line: With a price like this and falling daily, the value is hard to beat but the display makes it so much better.
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| vancouvermike's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario R3000Z (DP533AV) P... |
I purchased this laptop from Future Shop (Canada's Circuit City/Best Buy equivalent) for $1200.00 CDN which is about $960.00 US. I originally had a Dell Inspiron 4000 but refused to go back to Dell as a result of continuing problems (warranty issues, battery going dead twice and terrible support etc.)
Regardless of my new found disgust for Dell, I found the Compaq R3000 one of the best laptops I've ever used or seen and it is quite often the envy of the office as a result of it's beautiful screen.
Here are the specs of my particular system:
1.6-GHz Athlon XP-M 3000+, 256MB DDR SDRAM, 40GB (4,200-rpm hard drive, 15.4-inch (1,280 x 800) display, 802.11b wireless, 7.9-pound system weight (9.5-pound travel weight), nVidia GeForce 4 420 Go graphics, DVD/CD-RW combo drive, three USB 2.0 ports, came preloaded with Windows XP Home.
To begin, the value for this laptop is superb. I can't remember when one could purchase such a great laptop for such a great price. The AMD chip seriously blows away Intel (which I used exclusively until now). It's processing capabilities are more effecient than Intel to the point where Intel is now copying AMD technologies. Couple that with the stunning nVIDIA 32M graphics card and you're off and away. The graphics are stunning but you shouldn't buy this particular laptop if you're a gamer since 32M graphics is somewhat small compared to the current line of 128M gamer laptops. That's besides the point though, I bought this for work so the only games I play on this are online games or flash games. I did load up Counterstrike on here and played online and it was fine, a little choppy in high intensity graphics situations but for the most part, smooth and brilliant.
Compaq won big with this screen. I say that because it is so bright and so beautiful that people in my office always remark how nice it is. In fact, it's SO nice I stopped working on the company desktops and work only on this laptop now. It's very easy on the eyes and the 15.4" widescreen display is the crowning feature. You have to see it for yourself, I've never, in 29 years, seen anything so beautiful and crisp.
The CD/DVD drive is amazing too, I have no idea what they did to it but I've never had DVDs or CDs read so quickly. The moment the CD is in the drive, the system starts to play it...no delays...wierd but great. The beauty of the screen makes DVD playback another top quality of this laptop. There is no pixelization, solid refresh rate means no distorted image quality and the sound is quite nice too. I think this may have a built-in sub since the sound is crisp and clean, although speaker placement is a little abnormal. The stereo speakers are on either side of the very front of the laptop's base (imagine when you type on the keyboard, speakers are located at the place where your wrists touch the keyboard) so essentially they are a little out of the way but don't detract from the sound quality.
The touchpad is fine, you can turn it on and off with the click of a little button right on the touchpad and it's neat little finger scroll feature is something I've not seen on other systems. A little tough to use in the beginning but you get used to it. The keyboard is a normal keyboard, soft keys make typing a breeze, although the distance of the keys from the base of the system does take its toll on your wrists so just be aware that there is about 5" from the base of the laptop to the space bar...so you have to kind of rest your wrists on the base which is a little annoying.
It has 3 USB ports, quite nice considering USB mouses, flash cards, printers etc. you don't find yourself constantly disconnecting one input for another. Don't know about you but lack of input ports has always been a pet peeve of mine.
Wireless networking is pretty nice too. All you have to do is press a little button on the side of your laptop and it starts to actively scan for wireless networks and connects to the best one. This is new for me so I enjoy it from time to time, but as you'll find out in a little bit, it's not the best laptop to travel with.
I say that because the laptop is quite heavy. Compaq says this laptop weighs 7.7lbs on their website but I still think it feels heavier. Plus, most slim laptops weigh about 3.5lbs with the more bulkier ones coming in around 6.5-7 so at almost 8 pounds, you can imagine it is a rather bulky system which is why you really can't travel with it or take it to Starbucks. Well you can but it's heavy so holding a latte and this laptop my put some strain on you ;)
Another drawback is the battery life. It can remain on without having to go into effecient mode for about 3-4 hours, a typical coast-to-coast airplane ride, but that's touch and go. Depending on how much work you make the laptop do without AC power, it can last as little as 1 hour before asking you to switch to effecient mode (which sucks less power but makes the screen less bright and works slower). In it's effecient mode, it can work for about 5-6 hours, not too bad but not that great.
Just a quick feature I wanted to mention...for those of you who hate to turn your laptops on and off all the time, the hibernate feature is wonderful. One touch, it hibernates, no power use, another touch, everything back. Effortless unlike my last laptop that strained to recover (if at all) from sleep mode.
What else can I say? For the price, it's great. Sure it's not top of the line but believe me, it performs like a top of the line laptop. When put next to a $5000 laptop, it still blows it away in graphics quality and speed. If you don't care about impressing your collegues or whoever, buy this laptop as you will be suprised. I sure was. I was counting on getting the "Honda" version of the laptops but it ended up being quite the Lexus. (I don't know if that analogy made sense but I'm sticking with it).
Since I got it 3 months ago, I've recommended it to 3 friends, 2 of which actually purchased it and use it today. They are extremely pleased as well. Our company's IT manager recommended this one to me so you know when IT people refer you to something, it's worth checking out.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 960
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:
vancouvermike
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Reviews written: 7
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