Great Performance and Great Reliability.
Written: Jan 05 '04
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Pros: Great Performance and even better Reliabililty
Cons: Can't handle extreme temps with games, Few and poorly located USB ports.
The Bottom Line: Very high recommendation; Great performance and even better reliability. However; looking to play graphic intense games... look elsewhere
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| jlossner's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario 1525US (470046-473... |
For the money this has been a great laptop. When my desktop took a sudden crash I needed a computer in a hurry for my online classes. I needed something that would demand reliability and had desktop performance to run several applications at the same time quickly as I was used to with my desktop. I was also short on money and the 1 year no interest financing attracted me to the Presario laptops.
I chose what I thought was the best value for the money. I spent $1699.00 and got specifications that rivaled laptops by companies like Dell, Alienware and Gateway that were selling for close to $500 more on up. I got 512MB of memory, a hot (I mean temp. hot) P4 processor, 40GB of space and a quick CDRW drive. I also got a ATI RADEON 7500 graphics chip which had 32 MB of DEDICATED memory, which means that it doesn’t eat up memory for running applications, which means it has very good graphic ability. Unfortunately with the HOT P4 running, you can't play many games for long because of the laptop overheating and it shutting down automatically to prevent damage. VERY ANNOYING.
Regardless I have got a lot of use out of this beast and have had very little problems. I upgraded to Win. XP Pro, have all the Stardock Object Desktop applications installed, Office 2003, several Adobe programs, FrontPage and many other programs installed. I can run all these programs with much ease and little slowdown, including Adobe Photoshop, all the while with about 9 icons in the system tray running. Very impressive. Still - very bad at playing games.
Overall, I would recommend this laptop to anyone going to school. I keep this laptop on literally 1/2 the day at a minimum, also using it to design a ecommerce site for my employer currently with FrontPage. I have been using it at this capacity for over a year now and now problems and no slowdown.
GREAT LAPTOP.
Only cons I can think of are few. Obviously, P4 in laptops don't work, try those new Intel Procs that are made to run with less heat, are you can't play graphic intense games for too long (although when they do play I can set the graphics at full throttle and they still look and play great, only for a few minutes though).
Also, although there are a lot of cable hooks ups, even multi-monitor support, meaning you can run 2 monitors at same time (the LCD and another), the USB ports are too few (only 2) and they are annoyingly placed in the rear of the computer. Pain in the butt if you like the mouse hook up. Another point, I have small ands and the built on pointing device is located way to close to the space bar on the keyboard. I often find myself touching the pad accidentally and can get in the way when typing out a report or another document.
The power adapter I got has already been replaced, but I also put a lot of wear on it because I take my laptop to work with me to work on homework on downtime and manage and create pictures and web pages for my employer.
To wrap it up. Great performance for the money with great reliability, which give this a 4 star rating as far as I am concerned. If you are looking for something to play DuesEx 2 or MaxPayne on, look else where, but likely an Allienware that cost a lot more with better cooling. This laptop can handle the games graphically but not temperature wise. Convenience is a minor con with clumsily located USBs and far too few.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1699.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 41-50
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Epinions.com ID:
jlossner
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Reviews written: 2
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