Compaq Presario v6000z Review

<!-- Generated by XStandard version 1.7.1.0 on 2007-01-11T00:16:35 -->

by Zachary Blum

The holiday season of 2006 was filled with intense price competition between resellers for low-budget notebook sales. Online and brick and mortar stores alike battled for this market segment aggressively with mostly low-spec or low-quantity systems. The HP Compaq Presario V6000Z was a member of that competition, but unlike many of its competitors this model was available for build to order. There weren't any lines to wait in or crowds to brave. Plus, this 15&quot; laptop features a Mobile AMD Semprom CPU which offers the power-saving technologies Intel leaves off their Celeron M line. The V6000Z is built to be a general purpose notebook suited for general productivity; not anything overly demanding like gaming. It's a budget model that provides all the basics without sacrificing portability or battery life.

Compaq v6000z (view large image)

Configuration

• Mobile AMD Semprom 3500+ (1.8 GHz, 512 MB Cache)
• 15.4' WXGA Widescreen (1280x800, non-glossy/brightview)
• NVidia GeForce Go 6150 (borrows 64 MB of RAM)
• 1024 MB DDR2 RAM (2 Dimm)
• 40 GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
• DVD and CD-RW combo drive
• 802.11b/g wireless
• 6 cell battery
• Windows XP Home Edition (Windows Vista Express Upgrade Promotion)
• Microsoft Works and Money
• Standard finish (no swirl imprint)
  • 2 USB 2.0 ports
  • 1 VGA output
  • 1 S-Video output
  • 1 Lock slot
  • 1 Modem/Phone port
  • 1 Network/Ethernet port
  • 1 Expansion card slot

Reasons for Buying

What led me to looking at HP notebooks was the fact that I didn't have to deal with all the holiday traffic and crowds. Also, the price promotions and free upgrades HP was offering in the middle of December were exactly what I was looking for. This purchase was not for myself, however. Together my dad and I wanted to purchase a budget notebook for my mom. We didn't have a lot of money to work with and wanted to keep things as inexpensive as possible. Our target price was to be no more than $550 (after rebates). Also, we made the decision to purchase a little late in the season. After some research, especially on this site, I found HP to be running the best offers at the time. I was particularly interested in the free upgrade to 1 GB of RAM HPshopping.com was offering the week of 12/13/2006.

Compaq v6000z package contents (view large image)

Initially I started looking at the Compaq models because they were priced lower than the HP models on HPshopping. The V3000Z was the least expensive at the time I was looking, however the screen was 14&quot; inches and the RAM was at 512 MB. Making a significant upgrade to the hard drive to increase performance was out of the question, so I examined other models to see if I could get more RAM for almost the same price. This led me to the V6000Z and V6000T. These two were priced very similar. The difference was that the Z model had AMD processors and the T model had Intel processors. I made the decision to go with AMD after researching the power-saving technologies offered by both the Sempron and Celeron lines. I liked the variable clock speed ability the Sempron had over the Celeron, which lacked such a feature (speed-step is on Pentium processors). That and an inexpensive cache upgrade is what sold me on the Z model. Also, at the time there was a promotion for a free upgrade to 1 GB of RAM.

Where Purchased

I purchased this system through http://www.HPshopping.com after doing heavy comparison on offers from other manufacturers and also resellers. I opted for 2 day shipping and completed my order the evening of 12/13. I hoped that my order would arrive before Christmas day, but it ended up arriving 2 days after, which was ok because there wasn't a guarantee that it would arrive before Christmas and the actual estimate was for it to arrive late in the first week of January. The total price for the system came up to about $650, but there was a $100 mail-in-rebate. I really don't like mail-in-rebates although HP tries to make it less painful by having an online service to start the rebate process from their website. They say this will speed processing and hopefully it will. You still need to mail away some barcodes and your packing list though.

Packing

The system arrived via FedEx. I was really surprised when I got the initial tracking notification and the system started its FedEx journey in China. This isn't a bad thing, but as someone who has purchased Dell's in the past (which get transported to Texas before being shipped) it was a bit different. Again, not a negative though and FedEx did race it here. I liked the speed of the delivery because it was much faster than I anticipated. The notebook arrived with foam cushions on either side of its width and a box sitting atop it. The foam prevented both the outside box and inside box from touching the system, which was also wrapped in plastic. Basically, the packing is exactly what you'd expect to find.

Inside the box sitting next to the notebook is a quick-start poster, the AC adaptor (AKA power brick, which is actually more like a rice crispy because it's small and light), a short phone cable, and a bunch of advertisements and instruction booklets. There were no restore CD's provided. HP instead charges extra for these but does place an 8 GB restore partition on your system's hard drive. I'm itching to get rid of that when Vista arrives. 8 GB seems excessive to me because I have Windows CD's. However, some of the HP software is pretty nice.

Bloatware

Again I'm going to dedicate a section to the bloatware on this system. I know manufactures do this to lower prices, but it does get really annoying to boot into Windows for the first time and have to wait 5 to 7 minutes for all the garbage to load up and have to go through all the windows that pop up. You'll find Norton, Vongo, and some HP software like a wireless network assistant, auto-update program, and a quick-launch button configuration utility upon starting the system up. There's also a bunch of ISP offers like AOL plastered on your desktop. Removing most of these is rather easy. It also looks like HP provides some Wild Tangent games they've purchased for you and some picture album software. I only decided to remove some useless or annoying programs and left a bunch like the HP photo stuff and games. So far my mom has really liked the included HP software, especially the photo album tool. While installing replacement anti-virus and spyware software I had copied over from my other system I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly my software installed.

Build and Design

Compaq v6000z lid (view large image)

The V6000Z comes in a very dark grey color. I want to call it charcoal-like in color. Some of the pictures online made it look silver and that's just not what it looks like. It also really likes fingerprints. I did not opt for the imprint finish on this notebook since this was such a budget-conscious purchase. Upon starting up the notebook you'll notice blue lights for the &quot;feather-touch&quot; volume controls as well as media button (which boots up a DVD player that only responds within Windows). There's also a blue light on the power button and a blue ring that surrounds where the power adaptor plugs in. Blue indicator lights for the caps lock, scroll lock, and touchpad are right next to their appropriate buttons. There's an orange light for the Wi-Fi on/off switch which is analog and can be toggled even when the system is off.

v6000z QuickLaunch buttons (view large image)

One unusual thing to note with this system is that the indicator lights are very tiny and located at the bottom left of the system when open. They sit right where your left wrist would go so it's not hard at all to cover them up. They're also so small you don't always notice them. The casing of this system seems to be tough plastic too. It doesn't like to flex, but it will behind the screen if you really try to make it. Overall I was happy with its sturdiness. It's much stiffer than the Inspiron 6000 my brother has.

(view large image)

The dimensions for the main body of the laptop are: 14 ¼ inch wide x 1 ¼ inch tall x 10 ¼ inch deep. The entire thing seems to be made of sturdy plastic that's the dark grey everywhere except on the bottom where there's black. There's no latch to secure the screen when closed. However, the joints where the screen tilts back are stiff and prevent the screen from bouncing around much when open or being accidentally pulled open when closed. You'll want to be careful the first time or two you close the screen because the bottom of the system may lift a little. Also, during the ordering process if you want to get additional ports (like IEEE 1394) you'll have to get both the graphics card upgrade and the imprint finish. That was more than I wanted to spend.

Also, it's worth noting that this system and its power supply are very light. I was surprised when I felt the weight of the power supply. It's not much heavier than its casing. The power supply is also very small and has the dimensions of: 1 ¾ inch wide x 1 ¼ inch tall x 4 ¼ inch deep.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Compaq v6000z keyboard (view large image)

The keyboard on the V6000Z features keys that are flat and have squared edges. There's no flex on my keyboard and the keys are nicely responsive. The Ctrl and Fn keys are also in the positions I prefer them to be (Ctrl to the left of Fn). The touchpad on this system is also large and responsive. The scroll features seem to nearly always work. The only thing I don't like is that the touchpad seems to be a fingerprint magnet like the rest of system's casing. Also, the buttons on the touchpad are really annoying because you have to press them down so far. It takes some getting used to because they sink into the system rather than normal. I found tapping to be much easier for me to get used to than clicking the buttons.

Compaq v6000z touchpad (view large image)

Input and Output Ports

Front Side:

(view large image)

On the front is a wireless on/off switch plus indicator light, a microphone input, a headphone jack, and the indicator lights for power, HDD access, and charging.

Right Side:

(view large image)

On the right side of this system you'll find a USB 2.0 port, the power port, a lock slot, the DVD/CD drive, and a PCMCIA expansion card slot.

Left Side:

(view large image)

On the left side is an S-video output, VGA output, &quot;Expansion Port 3&quot; connector, the phone and network connections, plus a second USB port. The main intake vents are also located underneath the S-video and VGA ports.

Back Side:

(view large image)

Just the battery.

Bottom:

Compaq v6000z bottom view (view large image)

Access to the memory is located in the center of the unit. The battery release latch is also here as well as a panel to give you access to the hard drive. The main cooling fan can also be seen here.

Screen

On this particular purchase I did not buy the BrightView screen. I got the regular screen since the only difference seemed to be $25 more for the glossy screen. I was pleased to find that there weren't any dead or stuck pixels. Every pixel on the screen appears to be fine and there's no sheen to the screen either. It's just a regular LCD. The lack of the gloss coating helped save money and reduce glare/reflections, but picture quality on gloss screens always seems to be a bit more eye-catching for some reason. The non-gloss is fine for my mom's needs though. There's also not any noticeable light leakage on the bottom of the screen. Sure, blacks can seem a little uneven and the corners of the screen on the bottom look a little darker depending on how tilted your screen is, but these are all normal.

Viewing angles on this screen aren't too bad. You can always see what you're looking at from the sides, although the brightness decreases as you move to extremes. Vertical viewing angles are pretty narrow though. It takes a bit of practice to correctly position the angle of the screen so what you're looking at has constant color and isn't washed out or too dark. The NVidia graphics chip really struts its stuff here because it allows you to take the default sort of washed out look of the screen and reconfigure it to something much more appealing. I turned up the digital vibrance and contrast a bit and decreased the gamma a little. Brightness really didn't need much adjusting. Without the NVidia chip you lose the digital vibrance feature, unfortunately. That really saved the day here and makes this LCD better than I had expected. I'm very happy with the display and so is mom. It will take a good 5 to 10 minutes of playing with the graphics settings and viewing images for users to really find their preference.

There is one little weird thing I've noticed, however. When running the V6000Z on battery sometimes there's a quiet whine or buzzing from the lower right side of the screen right under the bezel. If you push on that plastic lightly or adjust the tilt of your screen the sound normally goes away. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. I'm not sure what causes it and it's easy to get rid of.

Speakers and Audio

I really can't say much about the audio on this system. Having the audio ports on the front is nice because you'll definitely want to use them if you listen to a lot of music. The V6000Z's speakers come from two quarter-sized ports sitting just above the right and left sides of the keyboard. The sound is unimpressive and you lose a lot of the lower frequency sounds. Higher frequency sounds can sound crackly which is disappointing. For general use this isn't bad, but music lovers will definitely want headphones. I typically test the sound using orchestra music. If I can hear all the instruments, feel the drums, and things sound the way they do with a real orchestra then the speakers are good. With the speakers on this system none of the above happens although you can tweak the sound levels in various Media Players to help. A subwoofer might have helped here but this is only a budget system. The sound could be worse. I've heard systems twice as expensive as this V6000Z (take my old sold Sony GRZ-630 for example) which had much poorer quality sound output. For the price I paid I really can't complain here. The speakers are competitive with what's out there at this price point. The audio chip in this system says it's a high-definition audio unit but I can't hear a difference compared to a regular AC'97 system.

Processor and Performance

The V6000Z has the option of Mobile AMD Sempron processors or Turion processors. Because I was on a budget I went for the Sempron. I chose to upgrade from the 3400+ to the 3500+ with double the cache since it was $20. This along with the gig of RAM I thought would be able to offset the slowness of a 5400 RPM hard drive well. I was happy to see that the standard hard drives from HP were 5400 RPM and not 4200 RPM on the V6000Z at the time of my purchase.

I'm happy to say that the responsiveness of this system is much better than I had expected. It's on par with a Pentium M 1.6 GHz laptop or an Athlon XP 2700+ desktop. The V6000Z is snappy and responsive. Thanks to the amount of RAM it does pretty well running multiple programs too. There's very little lag when switching between programs. Also, to help you save battery life the processor automatically down-clocks itself when you let it idle. This was a major selling point against its Celeron competitor, the V6000T.

Benchmarks

Super Pi

Super Pi is a benchmarking program that forces the processor to calculate the accuracty of Pi to 2 million digits. It's a good test for determining processor speed.

Laptop	Super Pi Result (2 million digits)
Compaq Presario v6000z (AMD Sempron 3500+)	1m 49s
HP Pavilion dv9000t (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Dell XPS M140 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 41s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s
Fujitsu LifeBook A6010 (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5500)	1m 22s

 

3D Mark 2005

3DMark 2005 is a benchmarking tool that tests the overall graphics performance of a PC. The Compaq v6000z is quite obviously not a gaming notebook and as such does not measure up well in graphics tests:

Laptop	3DMark 2005 Score
Compaq Presario v6000z (AMD Sempron 3500+)	644 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, Go 7400 256MB)	2,090 3DMarks
Sony VAIO SZ2 (2.16GHz Core Duo, NVIDIA 7400)	1,851 3DMarks
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	2,264 3DMarks
ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	2,092 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, GeForce Go 7400)	2,013 3DMarks

PCMark 2005

PC Mark 2005 is a great benchmarking tool for measuring a notebooks overall system performance. Here's how the v6000z stacks up against some other notebooks, the lack of dedicated graphics hurts the v6000z score but overall it's not a bad performance:

Laptop	PCMark 2005 Score
Compaq Presario v6000z (AMD Sempron 3500+)	2,287 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Sony VAIO FE590 (1.83GHz Core Duo, Nvidia Go 7400)	3,427 PCMarks
Toshiba Tecra M6 (1.66GHz Intel T2300E, Intel GMA 950)	2,732 PCMarks

HDTune

(view large image)

Heat and Noise

The V6000Z is surprisingly quiet. Even while running the benchmark programs above the fan was just about silent. You could hear it only if you were listening for it in a perfectly quiet room. If a TV is on or if people are talking you won't be able to hear the fan. During the PC Mark 2005 test there were a few times the fan started to spin up and you could start to notice it. However, it was not obtrusive nor did it make any whining noises. This Is a big improvement over HP's older blue and grey laptops. A few students in my computer science courses have these models and you can tell when their fans are revving up. With the V6000Z it does a great job of regulating its noise. I also found that propping up the left rear of the notebook also significantly helps the cooling system intake. I tried doing that and about a second later the fan slowed a bit even though the testing had not changed.

Heat on the V6000Z congregates at the bottom edge of the keyboard over its entire width. There is also some additional heat towards the top left where the main cooling system and CPU is. The system will keep your hands warm but it won't get them hot or uncomfortable. During the benchmarks the heat never became annoying or excessive. The system stays much cooler than my old single-fanned Sony notebook but cannot compete with my dual-fanned XPS Gen 2 notebook.

Wireless Performance

The wireless network assistant HP provides makes it pretty easy for you to connect to a home network to share files and printers. Microsoft needs to update its wireless network configuration in Windows XP because I can't count the number of average people that get lost using that. Thankfully HP makes it easy.

The actual reception and connection speeds of the V6000Z's wireless card are competitive. It gets just about as much reception as my Dell running an Intel wireless card. Any differences in performance were negligible. The driver utilities that support the wireless do have a smaller footprint in your memory than what the Intel drivers take up.

Battery Life

I don't have an exact time for how long the battery lasts. However, I can say that you can comfortably watch a 3 hour movie and have a little time left over if you dim your screen down two clicks. I did a battery test using the third Lord of the Rings movie and had plenty of battery left over for some browsing online for a while (20 minutes or so). For a 6 cell battery I really didn't expect that much battery time. Depending on how hard you use the system and how bright the screen is you're looking at anywhere between 3 and 4 hours of battery time with normal usage. That's plenty of time to watch almost any movie or go wireless for a good amount of time. It's been very useful for taking this laptop anywhere in the house (or even outside) and just doing whatever online or typing things up somewhere comfortable away from noise. If you're a college student and you like to write papers in a lounge or at the café but don't want to bring along your power brick, then this is a good choice system for you since you'll get just under 4 hours. During my movie-watching the wireless card was switched on the entire time. Disabling the wireless card could help get battery life over 4 hours for light usage or general productivity.

Operating System, Recovery Utilities, and Vista Upgrade

Because I was on a budget I opted for Windows XP Home Edition. You can also select Media Center and Professional editions for this notebook. All three versions come with a free Windows Vista Express Upgrade Program. XP Home Edition in particular upgrades to Vista Home Basic, which lacks the new aero interface Microsoft has been excited about. The V6000Z comes with a sticker that says it was designed for Windows XP and is Vista Capable. There's also an NVidia sticker on the system.

HP unfortunately charges extra for recovery discs. At the time of purchase it was an additional $20 to get these discs so I decided not to since I already have a Windows XP Home disc from another system. There is an 8 GB restore partition on the hard drive and you can also have the system burn factory restoration discs from the included utility HP places in the Windows Control Panel. It's worth noting that the Express Upgrade to Vista is completely free (no shipping and handling charges either) and includes a Vista CD as well as an HP Driver CD. That's a nice way of getting out of having to pay $20. The entire Vista upgrade online application was painless and didn't take long.

Customer Support

The V6000Z comes with a standard one year warranty at no extra charge. This was another major selling point over HP's rival Dell because competing systems from them came with only a standard 90-day warranty instead of the full year. Also, incase my mom didn't like the system, HP still doesn't have a restocking fee (at this time) if you return an item within their returns period after you receive your system. Normally I don't think about these things, but when you're on a budget and you're not sure if someone's going to be happy with their system then this is definitely something to make you more confident about forking over hundreds of dollars.

I have not personally had to contact customer support. My order was placed online and went through without any issues. It also arrived before the date HP promised it by. I am a little nervous about the mail-in-rebate though. HP does have a way for you to get your rebate started online and then mail the needed barcodes and packing list to them. This online tool also confirms the eligibility of your system so it's harder for you to get a letter back saying something isn't eligible (but I'm sure it's still possible!).

Conclusion

Pros:

• Very quiet
• Better than expected performance
• Power supply is small and light
• Good quality screen
• NVidia graphics chip and driver (helps improve screen color)
• Horizontal viewing angles are good
• Keyboard is firm and responsive
• Touchpad scroll feature almost always works
• Wireless on/off manual switch

Cons:

• Touchpad buttons sink into the case (takes a lot to push them)
• No latch on screen lid
• Small and easily covered up system indicator lights
• Only 2 USB 2.0 ports (one on each side)
• CD drive eject button placed at an awkward angle and blends into case

Recommendations:

If you're on a budget or don't need serious performance then you should take a look at the V6000Z. Gamers should steer clear of this model unless they aim only to play non-3D games. If your primary goal is to have a portable system around the house or dorm for productivity, web surfing, taxes (it's almost that time of the year again), chatting, and other general purpose things while making sure it will work with Vista, then the V6000Z is a good choice especially for entry-level users. It won't catch anyone's eye with is looks, logo, lights, performance, or expandability, but it will save you a ton of money.

 

Great review! Although I wouldn't consider 15.4" to be very portable, the v6000z is still a wonderful budget machine.
IMO, it'd be worth the extra money for the HP Imprint Design (swirly glossy exterior) though. The laptop looks a little odd without it. Still, not bad for $550.

 

Wow.. decent config @ value price. $550 is worth buying considering those specs.

 

I had the v6110us got a great deal at frys on sale for 600ish similer but
* Mobile AMD Turion64x2
* 15.4' WXGA Widescreen (1280x800, non-glossy/brightview)
* NVidia GeForce Go 6150 (borrows 64 MB of RAM)
* 512 MB DDR2 RAM (2 Dimm)
* 100GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
* Lightscribe DVD and CD-RW combo drive
* 802.11b/g wireless
* 6 cell battery
* Windows XP Media Center
* Microsoft Works and Money
* Standard finish (no swirl imprint)
o 2 USB 2.0 ports
o 1 VGA output
o 1 S-Video output
o 1 Lock slot
o 1 Modem/Phone port
o 1 Network/Ethernet port
o 1 Expansion card slot
and agree with a lot of what you said.. it was a great machine. it ran a lot of games even just fine after adding a gig stick of ram in it. WoW, eq2, oblivion all played great on it.
for being that cheap and the specs i was surprised how solid it felt and didnt flex. still didnt handle being smashed. but great machine. now i got bunch of extra parts off it.

 

Nice review, I actually like the matte finish more than the glossy imprint finish. Every one of those glossy notebooks ends up looking like a big fingerprint anyway.

 

Very nice review. I actually like the darker Compaq versions of these notebook better than the styling on the HPs. For someone who just needs a basic PC for Office and Internet, it's a solid choice. I had a V3000 for awhile which came just as infested with bloatware as the V6000. I think the Imprint Finish is quite slick. Scratches which it resists are permanent while fingerprints are easily wiped away.

 

Awesome review!

 

Great review, $550 isn't bad at all! 3-4 hours of battery life is excellent at this price point....

 

Nice review. I am really surprized by the long battery life (6-cells on HP usually get 2.5 hours) and the good Super Pi result (once again, ddr2 seems to help AMD CPUs).

 

Nice review! The notebook has a lot of good features, especially for the price.

 

I have a compaq v3018cl that I picked up from Costco running AMD Turion64x2 , 1 GB DDR2 , 100GB (5400) and the Nvidia 6150 as well.

It seems to do quite well with battery life once you install NHC and manage a few things ( no undervolting thank you).. I pulled off about 3 hours with watching some video, surfing , and listening to music, before I decided to call it a night and the battery still had 20 or so minutes to go ... not too shabby.

Complaints about these lappies in general:

1. No BT option .. mine cost me $800+taxes since it was a b&M purchase. I might return it since i need that functionality
2. DVD drive is a PITA to open with the recessed button.. you might think that this is a non issue until you actually try doing it a few times and it drives you nuts
3. my laptop seems to get quite hot in the regions indicated in the review.. under normal usage, CPu temp was at 47C, and that when placed on your lap can cause quite a bit of discomfort, even if its for just a few minutes... get a LT cooler if you plan on sitting down with this thing on the couch
4. Pathetic speakers
5. Something buggy about trying to shutdown/ standby the laptop if you have devices plugged in the USB port (such as a media reader/USB hub). It just wont shut down ot startup or resume out of standby/hibernate until all usb ports in the chassis are free and clear . this irks me to no end.

Having said all that, its a decent budget machine for everyday use, and though it does not meet my needs as well as I hoped it would, its great for college students/ basic home users as long as they invest $30 in a laptop cooler.

 

i don't get it, how is a sempron faster than a turion x2? my acer posted a 2min11sec super pi, while the sempron here posts a 1min49sec? There's something wrong here, either with the chips or with my acer.

 

Superpi is biased towards L2 cache. The TL-50 only has 256kb while the Sempron has 512kb. And if its any constellation, the X2 only had a slight improvement over the Turion 64.

 

The Sempron 3500+ runs at 1.8GHz & has 512k L2 cache whereas the Turion TL 50 runs at 1.6GHz with 256k L2 cache per core. The underlying architecture between the Turion, Sempron, Athlon & Opteron are the same. Plus SPi is a single threaded benchmark, so the times will naturally be faster on the Sempron. Run a multithreaded benchmark & the Turion X2 will easily outperform the Sempron.

 

Well done to the reviewer on being so careful with purchase and analyzing prices + feature benefits to find a laptop that fits the needs exactly. The quintessential Prosumer there.

You really can't argue with the price on this Presario v6000z.

 

The v6000z is and will remain one of my favorite budget notebooks. You did a great job of walking us through your experiences and decision-making. I'm amazed at what you got for $550.

This has got to be worth considering for anybody looking for a basic system.

 

gonna buy this for my girlfriend , as long as i get the money, though

are you sure? i can't believe tthe GPU would play oblivion?

 

Thanks for all the complements!

I've gotten used to carrying around a 17" laptop so to me being light and 15.4" is very portable. Definitely not true for people using systems smaller than mine, although I was surprised at the light-weight of it. Also, it probably doesn't help that I'm used to carrying around heavy textbooks too. My perception of what is and isn't portable is a little warped.

I was very surprised too. I really didn't expect it to get all the way through LotR: Return of the King, but it did and then had a little time left over (had to ignore the low battery warning, but not the critical one). I did have the screen dimmed a little as noted and the battery saving power settings were on. I do like to trim Windows and get rid of as many extra processes and services I can (not the recovery stuff though) so that probably played a role too.

Hmmm...I didn't even go test any games on this V6000z since it struggled with the 3dmark05 testing so much. My brother was in the room during the tests and didn't understand what was going on in the demo with the airship because the FPS was so slow. Your TurionX2 probably made a huge difference though.

I had the same experience with the battery. I remember they days where an hour and a half was all I got on my old Sony if I was lucky. Also, for your #2 I totally agree. I had to search for the button when trying to open the drive. Because it's slanted inward you really need to lean over quite a bit just to see it because it's kind of hidden. I'm sure once you get used to it it's ok...just might take a while for that to happen. As for #5 I don't know since all that was plugged in was a mouse and at one point a Kodak camera. So far standby's and shutdowns have all been exactly what is expected, which surprised me since my XPS laptop has had a lot of issues going into and coming out of standby mode.

What the other people above said is correct. Also, keep in mind this was a Semprom 3500+ and not a baseline 3400+ (which has half the cache). I did do the $20 CPU upgrade (it was that price at the time). I also made sure that the power saving was set for performance and not max battery so that the CPU wouldn't underclock. I also trimmed quite a bit of fat from Windows via msconfig and disabling services or startup things that aren't needed.

 

The most important thing to realize is that SuperPi does not benefit significantly from the second CPU core in your X2. So yes, your dual-core processor will often be faster than this single-core processor. SuperPi simply isn't a good benchmark for comparing single- to multi-core processors.

Also note the comment in the review about memory speeds. Some other websites have been known to use SuperPi as a memory speed benchmark, so it seems that memory speed matters as well.

 

Very nice review for an affordable notebook!

 

The semprom in the notebook runs very well much better than I thought, with a close comparison to the pentium M 1.86 ghz in super pi.

Great review, thanks.

 

Great review, thanks! I've been looking at those Compaqs a lot lately.

You mentioned a soft whine coming from the screen sometimes. I think this comes from an oscillator (voltage inverter) used for powering the LCD backlight (florescent tube).

I like the way you reviewed the bloatware as well. It's nice to hear that it wasn't too difficult to purge most of it. When I bought my first desktop PC in 2000, I was shy about stripping the free software crap. Now, it's: “G - e - t O - U - T !”

 

Yeah, that should be what it's from. It's just weird that it happens on the battery and not on the regular AC power. Not at all unusual though, but it can be annoying. At least it does go away easily.

Thanks Hey, sometimes they put good stuff in the free software. Most of the HP-made software was pretty useful and worth keeping, and it performed better than the Sony stuff I recall my GRZ-630 having. The other things where they want you to pay or lock you into a subscription are the trouble makers.

 

And as of today, Office Depot has the base machine for $399 (after rebates)!

 

my sound is choppy

 

I appreciate the thorough review very much. I've just order mine from
Office Depot. They have a buch of rebate (I sure hate these) which
total about $230. I paid $853.50 for it which include $40 for shipping
and $58.51 in taxes. The actual price that include the $40 after rebate
without tax is $564.99 for a 3500 sempron w/ 1G RAM, W/R 8X DVD
(+ $25, $60, $40).

Again, the review sure help me a lot in buying this laptop and I appreciate
that.

Regards,

CG

 

hello.. I bought a Compaq V6000, hard Disk 120Gb, I would like to divide my hard disk or can I say create one partition more...

When I try using my DVD's Recovery system it allowed me just to format all the hard disk and didnt give any option to split.

If I try my other windows XP copy, installing a new copy, at the begging when I try to create a partition with the normal windows XP procedures, it says " no hard disk is in your system

Anyway... how to create or divide my Hard Disk using the Pc Recovery from compaq/

I would appreciate if someone could help me.

Donigilo
[email protected]

 

start your own thread! Stop hijacking others.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1805086&postcount=4

 

Very nice detailed review. I just got mine with the 12 cell battery so, I'm very currious to how much battery time I'll get with that. My specs are in my sig.