The Compaq and HP Presario X6000 is a wonderful laptop. So far it has impressed me and passed every test I’ve thrown at it. Whether it be games, music, watching movies or business tasks, the Compaq Presario X6000 has performed incredibly well with all the various tasks.
The Compaq Presario X6000 is a desktop relacement and is actually a pretty good deal given the amount of features that you get with it. The Compaq Presario X6000 I own is on the higher end of configurations available:
2.80 Ghz Intel Pentium Processor 4 With Hyper threading.
512 MB DDR RAM
80 GB Hard-disk
17″ Widescreen WXVGA screen
Windows XP Professional SP2
256 MB dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon X600 Video Display card.
CD/DVD – R/RW
I bought the Compaq Presario X6000 laptop when I came to college. To be honest, I was a big game junkie and wanted something that could handle the latest games, but not be over the top when it came to price. I considered and looked at many Dell and HP laptops before I finally decided on the Compaq Presario X6000. The 17inch screen, the option to add a 256MB dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon X600 and the full keyboard were some of the things that finally made it the winner.
The total cost of the Compaq Presario X6000 came to just over $1500 at $1520 (including a portable HP mouse). That, I think is a pretty good deal given the configuration of the laptop. The laptop also came with a free HP 4800 series printer, and that made it a superb deal. Thankfully, the delivery of my shipment was delayed due to unavailability of some of the parts, and I got a 10% discount on top which brought the total price down to a much more affordable $1370.
The Compaq Presario has a pretty good build, although it can be accused of some flimsy areas. The screen doesn’t wobble at all, and doesn’t twist easily either, which is a good indicator of its sturdy build. The wide-screen 17 inch XWGA LCD screen is nice and bright (with extra bright view), with no dead pixels except for a very faint dead outline of the screen (it’s really not even noticeable unless you really try). The screen dims down slightly when operating on battery as with many other laptops, but other than that there’s nothing that you can pick out on it. The lighting is very even, and there is no leakage of light.
The Compaq Presario X6000 features a full keyboard with a separate numpad, which is really comfortable. The keyboard is very quiet compared to the Dell Inspiron that I also own, and the keys are just about the perfect pressure to use. The touchpad is placed right below the keyboard, under the space-bar. There is an on/off button for the touchpad which is a feature that I really appreciate as I don’t like using the touchpad and hate it when it messes up things when I’m typing or playing. The touchpad is sensitive, but not extra sensitive. It is more rectangular than most touchpads I’ve seen that are almost square, but that doesn’t affect it’s effectiveness at all. The touchpad is pretty good, and is not glossy or insensitive. The keyboard doesn’t sag when I type either.
The laptop is very clean and uncluttered over all. The wireless on/off button is placed on the top right, and the total number of buttons on the laptop is 5 – two for volume increase or decrease, one for mute, one to turn the laptop on/off (quick off sends it into the saved, rebootable or hibernate mode), the wireless on/off, and the touchpad on/off (right above the touchpad). A variety of other functions can be accessed easily by holding down the Function key and using the appropriate key. The only place the laptop does not seem as sturdy is around the wireless button, where I feel like if I pressed too hard, I would break through the plastic. Other than that one small area, the laptop feels very sturdy and solid.
While some think that the Presario X6000 is ugly, I really think it’s better looking than most laptops I’ve seen around, especially for a desktop replacement laptop. The lid is black in color with a shiny, silver Compaq logo in it. Everything other than that is a nice silver which is not exactly shiny, but not dull. But that I guess is personal opinion.
The speakers on the Compaq Presario X6000 are loud and clear, and even at the maximum volume (which is pretty high), they don’t cause noise problems. In fact, I prefer these speakers over some of the other external speakers because of the loud volume and the clear sounds it emanates. Obviously, this is no match for a set of good external speakers, but compared to most other laptops, The Presario X6000 features really good speakers. As such, buying external speakers is not recommended and is just an added expense.
The Compaq Presario X6000 is a pretty fast laptop, and with it’s 2.80 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 (with Hyper Threading) processor, it doesn’t waste much time just trying to complete normal tasks. Although more options were available, I went with just 512 MB of RAM, because the ATI M. Radeon X600 display card features 256 MB dedicated RAM of it’s own. The Presario has almost never hung-up on me. The only times that it has ever taken longer that I deem necessary has been when trying to cope up with 2-3 simultaneous saves in the Open Office Writer combined with browsing in 5-6 windows with Avant Browser, Firefox and Netscape all running together and in the rare instances when I alt-tab out of a game to do something else for a while, but it’s still pretty capable. Some of the games I use the Compaq Presario to check out were Doom 3, the demo of FEAR, some strategy games (like Disciples, AOM, AOE III, Warhammer 40,000 : Dawn Of War), and a few others like Lord of The Rings, and I’ve never had a problem with any of the game. With just about all the games I can set the display detail levels pretty high without any problems too, though Warhammer 40,000 slows down a bit in the higher settings when there’s a massive number of units in a single spot.
The various benchmarks of the Comapq Presario X6000 are listed below. You can see how the Preasrio X60000 fares against the other laptops in it’s class with this:
Now come the downsides of The Compaq Presario X6000 – the noise. The X6000 is supposed to be a desktop, and it heats up like one, though it has never gotten to uncomfortable levels at all. Generally the temp stays well below 45 Celsius even in summers. However the fans on the X6000 can get pretty loud. They’re not bad enough to embarrass me in public locations, and it doesn’t make any excess sounds at all, but it’s still louder than what I would expect from a laptop or a level that I’m comfortable with. This is justifiable when you look at how much is packed into this year and a half year old notebook. The optical drive doesn’t make much noise though, and that’s good, because the Dell I own, even though quieter than the X6000, make pretty loud noises when the optical drive is being accessed.
The other area where the Presario X6000 doesn’t match up is the battery life. The battery lasts about an hour and 40 minutes without the extra battery set, and with the wireless turned on, the battery lasts about an hour. Given that it’s a desktop replacement, it’s not very bad, but it’s still very disappointing. Extra batteries are available which boost the battery life by another hour and a half.
As far as different connection ports are concerned, the X6000 is well equipped with 5 different USB 2.0 ports (2 on the back, 2 on the right edge, and 1 on the left), has a multi 5-in-1 card reader (SD, MS/Pro, XD, MMC, SM), a TV out port, a LAN connector, an Expresscard port, an output for a second computer or laptop, a Firewire port and head phones and mic ports.
My Presario X6000 has Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN card (internal) for wireless connectivity. It’s pretty powerful and picks up all sorts of connections all over the place and I can go anywhere in our house and still maintain the connection, and I haven’t had a problem with it so far. The Compaq Presario X6000 comes with different options of Windows XP (I have XP Professional), and a variety of other software, including a 3 month trial of MS Office. It had a CD/DVD writing software and some rather disposable software that I have since replaced with better free software. A recovery disk, with a booting disk, and CDs for different software and drivers also came with it. It also had a disk for the drivers and other software for the HP printer that came with it.
HP has one of the best customer support systems in place, and even though I’ve never had a problem with the laptop that I needed to get in touch with them for, I did contact them when the shipment for my laptop was delayed. Their responses are timely and prompt, and they do go to some lengths to keep the customer happy. I received a discount and coupons for rebates and discounts on other HP products. I believe HP has phone and e-mail support available, and I suspect they have live chat support too.
The Presario comes with a 90 day warranty, and can be upgraded to 1 year or more for added payment.
All in all, The Compaq Presario X6000 is a good buy. It’s reasonably priced, especially for a desktop replacement and it performs well with all sorts of games and other resource-intensive applications. It has a large bright screen, is solid and sturdy, and has more ports than you’ll probably ever need. It has a full keyboard and the wireless card is really good too. On the other hand, it does heat up a little, and is loud. It also has a very weak battery life, lasting just about an hour with the wireless turned on.
If you’re looking for something that doesn’t cost too much, and can play most of the games on without any problems, this might be for you. Though be warned that the Compaq Presario X6000 has a very weak battery life and is primarily just a desktop replacement and shouldn’t be confused with a portable laptop (it weighs nearly 11 lbs with the power brick and mouse).
