HP Compaq's $300 laptop reviewed, makes strong case to bypass netbook
By Ross Miller 
posted August 2nd 2009 12:35AM
posted August 2nd 2009 12:35AM
posted August 2nd 2009 12:35AM
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I bought an acer 14.1 laptop at $300 long time ago, a little over an hour battery life, heavy weight, bulky size, it's pretty good as a cheap desktop browsing computer, but it's no netbook. acer aspire one 11.6" wit 1366x768 has no ion yet, but $330 at costco seems to be good, with Z520 cpu it says it would last almost 4 hours with 3cell battery
hey engadget, if you call your post a review, you ought to review the product, not write a lame ass blurb about it...
Still wont get it since it's made by compaq.... They always have had crappy computers just like e-machines
Their 350 on HP's website:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Category&v1=Everyday+computing&series_name=CQ60Z_series
One question: you can make light cheap netbooks from 8-10" and you can make cheap not so light laptops from 14-17" but if you need a light 12" laptop it cost $1500 - why?
Several reasons. Atom processors and their accompanying chipset are tiny, relatively cheap, and produce very little heat so don't require complicated cooling systems. Netbooks also usually do not have an optical drive. And often use slow 1.8" hard drives.
To get a full laptop's power and features into a 12" laptop's tiny body is a lot more difficult, and so expensive.
Will it play DVDs smoothly? What about Hulu? How does it handle Office? I hate how, in reviews, if a computer can't play Crysis on max settings, it's labeled as "only if you want to check email and cruise the web". And, sure it may be choking under Vista, but how does this perform with the latest Ubuntu on it?
http://computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/hp-compaq-presario-cq60-419wm
I bought this laptop last week at walmart to replace a older gateway laptop that best buy had a few years ago for $349. And I have to say for the money you can't beat it.
Get rid of windows vista for sure, and load windows 7. This thing is quite snappy at doing basic things. The 8200M blows away the normal 4500M intel graphics card that you would normally get, and the 3GB of ram you get is a nice little upgrade from the 2GB best buy offers in a toshiba for $299.
DVD's play real smooth, Office/Email/All Web browsing is real nice snappy and smooth on this. Even a few light games work really well thanks to the 8200M in there. I have Battlefield 2, Counter Strike Source and Call of Duty 4 loaded for some quick gaming when I need a break. All run great at Max settings, COD4 is at max res. medium settings and runs good.
Battery life is about 2 hours with screen not at full brightness.
For the price you really can't beat it. Handles many things quite well when using Windows 7. Vista is just to slow on it.
I highly doubt those games work well on that laptop. I have CoD4 installed on my Studio XPS 13 with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and a 9500M (SLI 9400M + 9200M) and I can not play at the max settings. I have to pretty much set the LOWEST settings to get decent framerates.
the best computer ever for the price!
Bleh, no one buys a netbook for the specs (I hope), but instead the size. That thing is a clunker and needs to be put out to pasture.
Nobody buys a netbook for the specs, but you'd be an absolute fool to think that nobody buys a netbook because of the price. If you're simply looking for an extra computer to do light work and you don't require portability, this is a much better choice for the money.
"Id laugh if apple tried to release a laptop as cheap or cheaper than $300. Im stu and im a PC."
Apple can barely even release an iPod Touch for less than $300, getting a whole computer down to that price point is well beyond their abilities.
I actually got one of these from walmart.com
about 340 with tax and shipping, so still not that bad.
SLOOOOWWW when starting up, comes with some preloaded crap that was reletively easy to uninstall.
Runs firefox 3.5 fine and play old games, like cs 1.6 and other games completely fine. Great for a casual gamer/someone who just browses the web. Hope this helps.
i bought one of these for my girlfriend... i told her it was 500 bucks :).... thanks for the heads up engadget.
Stealing the top of the thread to say this: My GF has the Celeron version of this laptop with Intel integrated graphics, and Counter-Strike Source is actually playable. So, their claim that all you can do is browse the web and check e-mail is a little under exaggerated. Just in case anyone was thinking about getting it. Certainly not a gaming machine... but she's had good luck with it, and it's only $300, so, yup.
I just bought one of these. Its not that bad. The screen is very nice and the price of $298.00 at Wal-mart wasnt bad. Its stutters a little on the HD video from my Flip Mino HD but not bad
I get the distinct feeling many people feel the netbook's only reason for existing is it's low price. however, many people (myself included) the netbook apeals because the thing is so small and light and can be run all day on a single charge. a $300 laptop does absolutely nothing to bridge that gap or make me want to bypass a netbook ...
Does anyone know what the cheapest laptop with bluray is?
$300 desktop reviewd, makes strong case to bypass cheap notebook
Should have picked up the HP g60 at best buy for $399 like I did. 4GB Ram Pentium Dual Core T4200, 250 GB HD, High Definition Screen, HDMI Out (My sticking point), Vista Ultimate 64 bit(I reformatted and slapped Windows 7 on it). DVD +-RW with Light Scribe, Integrated Webcam. Nearly full size keyboard with a number pad.
That was the best deal that I had seen in a while and I am very impressed with the performance.
My advice to all is to stay away from HP like the plague if technical and customer support mean anything to you. To give you an example, I called for support on a peripheral, and I was bounced from department to department SEVEN TIMES, the last time on which I got disconnected. The two or three other times I had to call for support didn't go much better. Of course, you only get 1 year of phone support, while other companies like Dell give you lifetime phone support. You might think you're getting a deal now, but just wait to you have a problem with it. You've been warned...
I just bought this laptop and have a few questions before I open it. I want to know if it will be able to comfortably handle my daily usage. I typically have a few tabs open in firefox while running winamp pro. At the same time I may be using MS word or excel. I download movies and music but don't need to store the movies, I just watch them and delete them. I don't need to play any high end games but I like to play internet flash games. I store photos and occasionally use photoshop but not too seriously. Will this pc handle these tasks without significant delay? Another concern I have is that there doesn't seem to be any top or side vents so I'm wondering if it overheats.
I don't get it why people think 15in is too big to be portable. Are all gadget guys such weaklings an extra 10 lbs is a no no? I travel all around the country due to work with a 15in dell in tow, and it's np, that's with the power adapter and everything else. I'm larger then average at 6'2/180, but still a thin frame, and I have no issue fitting it between business class seats.
I would always prefer to have a 14-15 in screen over those 8-9in deals, you just can't get any real work done on a 1024x600 screen and the keyboards are atrocious. Only reason I really want a netbook is having a computer I can easily move between my two cars (I currently have a hardwired car PC used for datalogging my car for tuning purposes and passenger entertainment, I'd like to be able to move it between the 2nd car).
I guess each person has a different use, and I think the specs on this are just fine for it's target market. A computer doesn't need a crazy fast proc to do 99% of what you need it to. Hell, I built a Athlon 900, 256mb DDR, Geforce 2 GT (32mb) and a ATA100 60GB Hd and it boots faster then the majority of people's computers that are running 2 gigs of ram a Sata drive and a dual core proc, the reason? Because I installed a fresh copy of XP, don't have a bunch of stuff starting up with windows and set everything up correctly. No crazy "133t h4x0ring" or stripped builds, just normal XP build with nothing set to start up.
If your a lower budget geek, you could easily buy this, blow the crapware off it, and have a PC that works just as fast as needed, because people who buy 300 dollar units, are not editing HD video, so what's it matter? I never understood how people get caught in the ever rising baseline game.
2 years ago we said you needed at least " X" to run XP well, how is it that even though that spec is just as fast as it was 2 years ago, now we need a dual core and 2 gigs of RAM for XP to work well? Easy, people don't know what they are talking about, and are doing just want PC makers want them too, they are getting tricked into pushing the baseline up in their mind.
that means teh battery life is crap
which is one reason people buy netbooks instead
wah?
how is this an alternative to a netbook?
other than being underpowered? it is considerably less portable than a netbook and would be big enough to be a hassle to set up for me on an airplane..whereas my AspireOne is awesome for keeping me entertained / get something done on a plane... personally i don't give a flyin' gods @#$% about the optical drive I just rip them (dvds) and load em on my AAO.
some people (me for one) wanted a netbook (understanding the limitations of the Atom platform) because the form factor / functionality was perfect for a set of tasks we had in mind.
I have a full sized laptop also but it has basically seen little use since I got my AAO
Hey Guys,
I bought 2 of these and put XP on both and this thing screams... would definitely recommend to anyone looking for an inexpensive laptop... just make sure to downgrade to XP... it is definitely well worth it...
u cant spend like 80 bucks more and still be cheaper the lot netbook
and get a dula core version this ar new egg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834107029
not a bad deal either
this is almost identical to the hp one except the specs arent as good. Definately spring for the hp mini 110