Compaq Presario V2555US 14" Laptop (Mobile AMD Sempron Processor 3000+, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) | List Price: $971.00
|
Brand: Hewlett-Packard
Binding: Personal Computers
Features: - Notebook with widescreen 14-inch screen and 1.8 GHz Mobile AMD Sempron 3000+
- 40 GB hard drive, 512 MB of RAM (2 GB max), DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive
- Two USB 2.0, one VGA, one S-Video, one PCMCIA, microphone, headphone
- Built-in 10/100/ BASE-T ethernet; 56K (V.90) modem, 54-Mbps wireless LAN (802.11b/g) with HSM/Speedbooster support
- Windows XP Home edition, SP2
Basic home laptop, nice bang for buck [Posted on 2006-02-18]
Pros:
Can't beat the price, quiet, wide truebrite screen, wi-fi.
Cons:
2 x 256MB, volume control, 40 GB HDD @ 4200, no firewire, 2 USB ports
The Bottom Line:
Basic home laptop, nice bang for buck. Don't expect to play games on it.
Full Review:
Got this Presario V2555US for $579 after rebate from Office Depot.
Seems to serve well for basic net surfing, word processing, playing movies and listening to songs etc. The integrated video card is set up to use 128 MB from the primary memory, this can be reassigned to 32 MB in the BIOS, since you won't be playing games on this puppy.
Gripes:
. Don't be fooled by the image, I thought it was silver throughout, but its black on the top and bottom of the laptop. Would have been better if it was completely silver.
. Lot of unnecessary HP software.
. Even though memory is 512 MB, it comes in two 256 MB modules, so both DIMMs are occupied.
. The volume up/down buttons are not analog, they directly work on the soft control.
. Overall build is sort of flimsy, especially near the DVD-ROM drive.
. No IEEE Firewire port and only 2 measly USB ports.
. Touchpad could have been better.
. Battery would probably give you something less than 2 hours.
Goods:
. Aptly priced.
. Looks good when opened, except for the black on the top and the bottom.
. Like the 14" true brite widescreen.
. Size: Not too bulky, but a bit on the heavier side for its size.
. Very quite, unlike other laptops that I have used in the past.
. Built-in Wi-fi seems to work like a charm, unlike my previous Toshiba Satellite.
Great Laptop. Let an expert clear soem things up. [Posted on 2006-04-06]
This laptop is very good for its price range. The pros far outweigh the cons. The LCD is one of the best I have seen on any laptop including Apple, it is bright, responsive and the image quality is second to none. mainstream application performance is very good, I upgraded from an Athlon XP 1800+ and there is simply no comparison. The laptop is light yet sturdy, battery life is above average and the onboard GPU is excellent for this price range. Contrary to popular belief the Radeon Xpress 200M is very capable of running all modern games with the settings tweaked for performance. Examples I run Need For Speed Underground at Medium resolution with all of the eye candy turned on except for motion blur and it runs smooth as can be, far better than the Radeon 9000 I had in my old laptop, I have successfully played Far Cry, Unreal Tournament 2004, Worlds of Warcraft, Quake 3, Need For Speed Underground 2 and all te EA sports titles. This laptop is not designed for gaming gurus but it indeed can play games. I was very surprised at the audio quality and the volume and crispness of the speakers. There are a few cons which I will list below but they are not enough to make me rate the laptop lower.
Cons: The latch on the LCD is not the best, the construction while sturdy could have been better for example the optical drive seems slightly loose when you pick the unit up and it generates ever the slightest too much heat under the palmrest but nothing serious and it isnt uncomfortable to the touch.
Overall this is a superb laptop but I would recommend that if you want to run games upgrade to 1GB of ram or at least replace one of the 256 Sodimms with a 512 so you have 768 minimum. I also upgraded my Hard Drive to a 80GB 7200 RPM which helps games alot..
Money Well Spent [Posted on 2006-08-06]
For what you'd pay for this Compaq V2555US, you get more than what you'd expect from a value-priced laptop. I bought this system to be used as part of a home business and I'm very glad I did.
The 14.1" hi-def screen is perhaps delivers some of the brightest, cleanest images I've seen, which makes it very good for playing DVDs. The Altec-Lansing speakers sound pretty descent for a laptop. The Sempron 3000+ is the fastest chip I've seen from any computer in this price range. It's easily portable: not too big, not too bulky and not too heavy. In terms of performance, it multitasks very well with E-mail, websurfing and working with apps like OpenOffice. Fit and finish is also very nice. The system looks and feels like it's put together for the long haul, nor does it have that cheap, flimsy feel that I've seen from other brands in this price range.
This thing can run kinda warm from the tight confines within the system, so you don't want to keep it in your lap for very long. As I said a minute ago, this notebook is best for things like web surfing and firing off the occasional E-mail. Even though the Radeon Xpress 200M *is* capable of running most newer titles, this is not a hardcore game machine. There are no FireWire ports, but since I have no need for them, it doesn't matter. A lot of the pre-installed software was unnecessary, though it was nothing a visit to the Add or Remove Programs panel couldn't fix. Performance isn't too bad, but the shared video memory and system memory can be a bottleneck if set to 128 MB. An upgrade will go a long way in boosting performance, and you can always resell the old sticks on Amazon or eBay to offset the cost.
Overall, this is a great laptop for the budget conscious with a nice set of features and good performance. Hardcore gamers or multimedia buffs may want to look elsewhere.
Excellent Choice [Posted on 2007-01-31]
I've owned this computer for about eight months and I like it so well that I recommended it to my mother. If you use a laptop primarily for writing and Internet this one is a great value. The screen is excellent and the keyboard has the best feel of any I have tried (though I have not tried them all). As a writer the keyboard is particularly important, and I am completely happy with this one. The mouse pad works fine, but I prefer a track ball so I've added a wireless Logitech. The wi-fi feature is wonderful.
If you spend much time on the Internet, the file cache should be purged frequently because it will bog down with unused files. It has no problem, however, with book-sized manuscripts, the writing of which is my primary use for this machine. Overall, I am quite satisfied with it.
J Douglas Bottorff, author of The Whisper of Pialigos
Good for a year...then it's junk [Posted on 2007-08-27]
This laptop fell apart piece by piece after a year. It's a good thing I purchased an overpriced HP warranty to replace the parts b/c it's garbage. Either get a Dell or get a mac. Don't waste your time on this unless the only thing you'll be doing is surfing the internet. Anything else and it's garbage.
Click here for more details and discount information...
|
){kind=link}