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Compaq Presario 920US Notebook PC (1.67 GHz Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drive)

Compaq Presario 920US Notebook PC (1.67 GHz Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drive)

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: False advertising !
Review: First, the Athlon XP 2000+ outperforms a 2Ghz P4 in most tasks. Second, the video card uses shared system memory. This means that the 16MB is taken from the 512MB used for normal memory. Third, you are not stuck with only 16MB of video memory. I keep mine set at 64MB which is equal to or more than any other laptop video card.

To change the amount of memory dedicated to graphics, press F10 at the beginning of the boot process. Under the "Advanced" tab you will see an option that says something like "AGP aperture size". It will have options for 16, 32, or 64MB. The integrated graphics are decent, but they are now oficially 2 generations old (The newest being the Mobile Radeon 9000). This card performs like a Radeon 7000 (the original Radeon) for the desktop.

I play Neverwinter Nights, Counter-Strike, and Unreal Tournament without problems on this laptop. UT 2003 works, but it is a little slower than I like.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: There are some things you must know!
Review: First, the Athlon XP 2000+ outperforms a 2Ghz P4 in most tasks. Second, the video card uses shared system memory. This means that the 16MB is taken from the 512MB used for normal memory. Third, you are not stuck with only 16MB of video memory. I keep mine set at 64MB which is equal to or more than any other laptop video card.

To change the amount of memory dedicated to graphics, press F10 at the beginning of the boot process. Under the "Advanced" tab you will see an option that says something like "AGP aperture size". It will have options for 16, 32, or 64MB. The integrated graphics are decent, but they are now oficially 2 generations old (The newest being the Mobile Radeon 9000). This card performs like a Radeon 7000 (the original Radeon) for the desktop.

I play Neverwinter Nights, Counter-Strike, and Unreal Tournament without problems on this laptop. UT 2003 works, but it is a little slower than I like.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: False advertising !
Review: Its 1.79 inches thick NOT 1.5 inches. And it probably weighs more than 6.5lbs they claim...

Runs too hot and display is very grainy compared to other budget laptops. not to mention noisy hard disk from fujitsu and badly designed keyboard & useless ovalpad...

Compaq support is above average though.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice laptop.
Review: To begin with, it looks great. It's black & silver, sleek & reasonably svelte at 6.5 lbs. The HP genes are apparent in its design and the result is pleasing. The CPU is an adequate 1.67 Athalon XP; it's quite capable of most daily, non-graphics intense tasks, but not as good as an Intel P4. System memory is provided by a very fast 512 megs of DDRAM. The hard drive is a generous 40 gigs. A DVD/CD-R/W combination drive in included. All the Compaq's connections are in the right place, though missing throughout the entire 9xx line is any USB 2.0 port. The video card is a bit small for the other components of the 920, with a 16 meg ATI card onboard driving a 15" active matrix display. (I am a fan of ATI graphics cards because they have been quite reliable over the long haul and because upgrading them from ATI's nice website is a snap. However, this machine should have been given at least 32 megs of video RAM) Overall, this is a very good machine made by a company that looks like it's here to stay.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Caveat Emptor
Review: Very good value for the price--AMD beats Intel any day of the week for tasks other than video editing. It's great for all that's there--a CD/RW combo drive, generous amounts of memory and hard drive storage space, but be warned that this latest incarnation of the Compaq Presario series comes without a 3.5" floppy drive. Fine if you've moved past it for things like CD-RWs and network-based storage, but if you still use floppies, consider either an external drive or contact HP to see if they have a swappable floppy drive that can go in the CD-RW drive's place when you need to use it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: HotPaq also serves as your winter heater!
Review: You live in a cold area like Canada or Arctic? You might then love this as it can also double up as room heater. After an hr of demanding use like a movie and you may as boil you eggs on it. No seriously, I am yet to see a laptop running hotter than this one. And all this with supposedly PowerNow! technology from AMD.

Well I guess I should have realized that if desktop Athlons run so hot then mobile ones can't be very dfferent. HPpaq makes pathetic laptops to say the least. They couldn't even get proper cooling solution for the processor, chipset & memory.

Now back to the laptop under review.

The keyboard was certainly designed by morons. 10 keys on bottom row, out of which only 4 were really needed. and that to mostly wrongly placed. space bar is tiny, tons of junk Windows buttons around, Fn button in place of Ctrl, Caps lock too big size, a repeated | button the bottom row, and delete button at the farthest/obscurest corner of the laptop. To top it all off the whole thing shakes when typing & looks like some buttons would surely break off. Never seen a more pathetic keyboard.

The scroll pad and touchpad buttons again are designed to looks good but have no usability. The up/down keys are easier to use than the junk ovalpad.

Only one PCMCIA card slot, not 2 as in most laptops. HPpaq phone support is worst in industry, try calling them. HP doesn't even have a toll free phone number for consumer laptops.

All HPpaq 9xxus models have a shared memory ATI integrated graphics will max 3DMark2001 score of 1500 (no matter how faster athlon is or how much RAM you put in). Very poor performance. Get a laptop based on Intel chipset.

The colors are also not good, even with the latest ATI drivers and on A/C power. Although screen is bright enough.

The case looks very clunky and thick. More than 1.6" I expected.

HPpaq cheats you by not even including a full copy of WinXP to reinstall XP later on. Only a restore Cd to erase everything & put all nasty programs back. Yes that true, they bundled 12+ nasty promotional programs for which no one has any use. Like Disney Online.

Finally all useful ports are at the back and covered by clumsy cover. What a pain to connect anythign to it.

Two stars because it costs under 850 after rebates in some local stores and because it runs.

Shame on HPpaq for building such a laptop. I suggest you look at Toshiba/Dell laptops around. You (roughly) get what you pay for.


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