Compaq,Reliability? Not so far!

[RX]

I bought a Compaq Presario S3180AN. Mostly because I live in a town with no computer shop and Retravision was the best bet. I forked out over $10,000 for anew living room. Sofa, recliners, 127cm TV, State of the sound system(Dennon+Jenson) and a new PC to be the centre of it all. I bought a AMD Athlon 2600+ with 6ch sound, GeForce4 with TVout and a 60Gb HDD. When I got it all home I found that the computer had no TVout. The bios has it enabled for pal but it seems someone forgot to fit the plug in the back because there isn't one!! I did some checking=A7N8X-LA. Onboard everything. I thought I was getting a card? The hard drive is only a 50gb and the cpu (advertised as 2.13gz) turned out to only boot at 2.08! I dont mind 'cause I got the 333fsb but that's not the point. Nothing on this computer is as it was advertised and sold as. I got onto Compaq and they sent me a number to call and I was kept on hold for over an hour and still no answer! I mean, whats the point of buying the best thing I could find to run my home theatre if all I can connect to it is a 15" LCD? I have since sent seveeral Emails but to no avail. So now I'm having to go to court. They ripped me off and now won't even refund. Pretty pathetic if you ask me. The thing dosen't even connect to my stereo, I'm supposed to buy something extra for that. Nice of them to let me know after I payed $3000 for it. So a word of advice...........DON'T BUY COMPAQ HP CAUSE THEY'RE SH*T SH*T !%$&*^()*(&*^$%

 

[Zim Hosein]

:beer:

 

[fatbaby]

Crusty old M*x*c*n parts are questionable.

And you deserved it anyways. Why couldn't you buy a dell? $3000 could of gotten you a dimension xps with a 3.0 ghz proc with hyperthreading, 800 mhz bus, a gig of ram, a radeon 9800, audigy 2, and a 17" lcd!

 

[RX]

I didn't have any choice. If you could see where I live you'd understand. Besides I haven't had anything to do with comp's since the P2 500 day's. I actually thought I was getting a good deal. Besides, I dont rip anyone off so I don't se how I could "deserve it" Nobody deserves to get ripped!!!

 

[RX]

cheers...........

 

[PCMarine]

You should have done your research first. What about buying a pre-built system online?

 

[shiner]

Compaq servers are rock solid. Their desktops....pretty hit and miss unless you buy from the workstation line.

 

[Paulson]

I have a compaq presario that is now my fileserver/webserver...

Works awesome when you put the right operating system on it..

as for your troubles, where did you buy it from? Compaq directly or what?

 

[RX]

I moved to a place in west australia and there is literally nothing here except art galleries(woodwork etc.) and without a public library, internet cafe or friends with acces to net, it can be difficult to do any sort of research. That's part of the reason I bought it,to keep up. Feels like I'm getting left behind out here in the desert!!!!

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: shinerburke
Compaq servers are rock solid. Their desktops....pretty hit and miss unless you buy from the workstation line.

Yup, we use Compaq servers and desktops (up until recently) at work. The servers are rock solid, the desktops suck (even the workstations ones IMHO). I've convinced them to go Dell for desktops and notebooks, and it's been great so far.

 

[RX]

I'm not complaining about the performance of the pc. I've maxed out the ram to 1024mb DDR 333 and it does everything that a pc should and more. I just didn't get what I was specifically sold. I asked for this and got that and when confronted over what should be a simple problem & solve, they just ignored it and did nothing. So, there remains the question ; Compaq, Reliability? Not so far.... Performance, Great! Service, well there's a whole new topic all together!

 

[shiner]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: shinerburke
Compaq servers are rock solid. Their desktops....pretty hit and miss unless you buy from the workstation line.

Yup, we use Compaq servers and desktops (up until recently) at work. The servers are rock solid, the desktops suck (even the workstations ones IMHO). I've convinced them to go Dell for desktops and notebooks, and it's been great so far.

Where I work we are exclusively Compaq servers, well except for the VMS boxes, and we've had great luck. We have somewhere around 126 servers and all are rock solid. I've been working there since late 1997 and some of the pre date me. The workstations....eh....early on they were pretty much crap. Sometime in 2000 they started improving, still not great but they are better. Right now our standard client workstaion is an Evo 510 and we've had pretty good luck with them. Right now they are looking at Dell & IBM for our possible new workstations. Last year they brought in some Dell servers for eval and I was not impressed. Compared to a Compaq they look cheaply made, lots of plastic parts where the Compaq's are metal, and they just seemed to be much lower quality. Just my opinion though.....