Staples: Compaq Presario 2101US Laptop Celeron 1.7GHz, 256MB DDR, 20GB, DVD, 15" TFT $650 AR shipped, So is HP ZE4210!

[Andy]

Any insight on battery life on these?

 

[jinduy]

does this beat the new toshiba deal? $550 s123 model

 

[EektheCat]

Umm.. what toshiba deal? I searched for 's123' and 'toshiba', but didn't come up with any hits.

 

[jinduy]

see chubby wallet or techbargains


btw i dont want to post the deal because im 'fraid of being flamed

 

[deramon]

Originally posted by: bit
nobody think this is hot? hmmm

Of course it is ... but my Toshiba 866 is still worth keeping not replacing yet.

 

[Poliphili]

Actually I have never seen the 1500T though I believe that it comes with a P4. If it comes with a discrete graphics solution as well I would imagine that, combined with a much faster P4, it would trounce the 1200us depending on price.

A little update: After spending a couple of days setting my new laptop up I go to burn a CD-R for the first time using the included Roxio Basic and it says, "No useable recording device found in the system." Huh? No problem I say, Roxio Basic blows IMHO so I install a full version of Nero that I have...same thing, no CDRW found. OK, maybe I got the wrong box. Nope, box says DVD/CDRW combo. So do both the HP/Compaq and Staples websites.

So I go back to the system and MyComputer shows a "DVD/CDRW" icon for the D drive, but then that is just a BIOS setting and is not being read from actual hardware. The drive door shows both DVD and CDRW icons but those are just clicked into place and not a permanent part of the drive. So I right-click on the icon and go to properties and see that it shows the generic drive type as DVD (again, just the BIOS right?) but for hardware it shows "Toshiba DVD drive" all of the Min/Max write speeds are blanked out and the drive will not recognize blank CD-R/CD-RW media. So I close out and open properties again, this time it shows ?CDRW??WTF? I close out and open again and it says ?DVD? again? Well the drive plays DVDs flawlessly but can?t burn a CD-R so there is no doubt in my mind that it is only a DVD drive as each time, regardless of ?drive type?, the properties show it as a ?Toshiba DVD?.

So I spend about 2 hours on the phone with Compaq only to have them tell me that it is a Staples problem, then after about an hour with Staples they tell me that it is definitely a Compaq problem but I could always "try my luck back at the store". WTF? "Try my luck...?? Anyway, the store manager is a good guy and said he will try to straighten this out but what a pain. Parenthetically, why do I not just return or exchange it? Because I am told there is a 15% restock fee for open computers and Staples does not want to open another 1200us box if Compaq is ultimately going to replace my computer. All of a sudden this has gone from a hot/warm deal to tepid at best.

Oh well...

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: DTBH

Originally posted by: RossMAN
Poliphili - Great post, do you know how the 2100US compares to the 1500T?

Hmm that I would like to know too... not specs or anything but user preferences.

1500T, uses desktop p4 cpu. weighs more, i'd say nicer looking though. the 1500T was also available in SXGA+ i dunno if the 2100 is. it also used a radeon 7500 32mb card, much faster than the 2100us. also that 1500T has usb 2.0.


2100US uses integrated radeon IGP 340M with shared memory.


the 1500T is discontinued and has been replaced with the 1510T. 1510 uses also the igp340M integrated radeon rv100 (Radeon ve core with shraed ram). the radeon m6 is the r100 core (original radeon), m7 is what the 1500T has, the r200v or whateer(Radeon 7500