Does Compaq make a decent laptop?

[AMDPwred]

I'm in the market for a laptop for development work (no gaming) and Circuit City has a great deal on a Athlon4 1.2ghz, 256MB, DVD/CD-RW laptop ($1350). Does anyone here have a Compaq laptop? I would get a Dell, but I don't want Intel and the prices are just too high. Opinions?

 

[ElFenix]

if it says presario its crap. evo is a good line. amd isn't all that good for notebooks anyway.

 

[flood]

If its the black plastic body, its mediocre.
Their line which uses the metallic bodies (ie 1700T) is very nice.
I've had good success with the Athlon4 laptops. Battery life is usually very respectable and its plenty fast.

 

[BD231]

Hell no!!, their horrible man. I've seen 4 different compaq lappys and they were all unreliable at best. I'm not sure on their newer Athlon 4 models, I havent ever played with any, but I wouldent touch Compaq if I were getting a lappy. You should pick a few different ones up and test them out yourself though, that way you can be sure you'll be happy with whatever you get. My choice would be Dell, HP, or Gateway. Those are the only lappys I've ever really liked. A friend of mine had me setup a network connection with her office computer and a new Toshiba lappy she just bought, it wasent half bad IMO but I hear mixed things about them.

 

[4824guy]

The older Armanda line seemed to work ok. We had about 25 used at work and none had any major problems. Just some incompaitlbity issues with IE4, but that was not a major issue for us.

 

[Yoshi]

Compaq computers suck in general, I would not buy their laptop.

 

[Gunbuster]

People will bash compaq because its the thing to do, but even older presarios (~1-2 years old) have been pretty solid.

the only design problem most Compaqs share is a shoddy rear power jack that breaks off on a whim when not treated with care

but dont even trust me, play with the laptop at the store, every band has it's share of jems and dogs


you can try looking on usenet and the Cnet for user comments on the exact model, but be warned even the best lappys seem to have a solid net following of nitpickers and haters

 

[1]

Opinions are like rectums. Oh well, can't we all agree to disagree. I've owned several Compaq laptops. I currently have a 1800 and a 1694 model. For the money versus the features, they can't be beat. I did some research several years ago. I wanted Sony. Again. for the money and features, Compaq was my choice and it's still my choice. Someone has a Compaq 1800, Intel 1ghz processor, 15" TFT, 256k ram, DVD/CDR listed on ebay, buy it now, for $1075. That's a great price for a laptop with that many features. Take the advice of someone before me and check out as many in the stores. Do your research prior to purchase. Here's a solid vote for Compaq. GOOD LUCK!

 

[AMDPwred]

The one I'm looking at is the 700 series (silver shell). I've played with it alot at the store. Price/specs you can't beat it. I've looked everywhere for a good deal on a laptop. Everything else is through the roof.

Product Link

 

[Blayze]

I have an older Presario notebook.

once I formatted and removed all the junk that was on it and installed Windows 2000 it runs great.

 

[AMDPwred]

Yeah, I'd probably reformat and get XP Pro on it.

 

[hans007]

well the presario 700 apparently is good enough for the business line since they rebadge it as the evo n115 . my dad had a presario 1920, it was pretty rugged and useful, but the backlight fried out on it. fixable though, but still. I dont thikn it makes much difference who makes your laptop so much, the compaq ones are fairly solid compared to dell or something, and most laptops are made by taiwanese OEMs anyways.

 

[jschuk]

Not too much experience with the Presarios other than their OS support sucks to be blunt. Get used to the OS that comes with it, or is available on the market when you purchased the laptop, because those will probably be the only ones that Compaq will have support for.