Compaq v3000z Review (pics, specs)

So Ive been watching this and I'm just have a couple questions...
I'm a BIG game and love good grahpics and speed/power, but I also need something cheap and hard working. I've been considering this laptop for a future buy but I had a couple of Q's maybe you have some A's...
Anways how would you rate the graphics? And Is the SuperMulti drive fast and reliable?

 

If you are a huge gamer, then this notebook is definately not for you.
The graphics in it though are some of the best integrated graphics around, its a bit faster than the Radeon X200 and much faster than any of Intel's crappy integrated graphics but this is not for serious gaming.

 

Sooo... what about the SuperMulti drive? is any good, is it fast enough? oh... TY

 

Sorry, I've only had the notebook for less than a day and haven't been able to test out the drive. Why not ask Miner, who has the same notebook as I but for about a couple of weeks?

 

I have seen HP use 2 different sources for the SuperMulti drives. LG and Pioneer. I have the LG GMA-4082N, it is bit picky on the media but the burning speed is pretty good. I will admit I dont really burn many DVD/CD's but other than the media I havent had any other major issues with the drive.

Details for the LG drive...
http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/gma-4082n.jhtml

 

Thank you so much! Despite some graphics issuse I will still most likely get it, because I like portable speed and that it's Vista compatible/ready. If or when I get it I'll put my 2 cents in... tysm!

 

Good luck to you, I myself am enjoying the notebook so far, no problems whatsoever.
Only thing is I wish it could have a webcam and QuickPlay buttons like the HP DV2000 series does, but I think the V3000s look better.

 

Hey guys. Great info! Some good deals came out in the paper today for the V3019us and I'm considering getting one. But, I have a question for those of you that already own one. How is the heat? I would be using it mostly in my lap while on the train to and from work (1hr trip), so I don't want something that gets really hot. Anyone have any input on this?

Thanks.

 

Not much heat can be felt during regular use. The front left which is where the hard drive is located gets fairly warm. This depends on the hard drive HP ships with. They have several sources, my Fujitsu doesnt get too hot, but I hear the WD, Seagates and Hitachis do dissipate more heat. Other than that the exhaust vent on the back left is a bit warm as well. I have not noticed any other hot spots.

Overall I felt heat is not a big issue in this laptop.

 

Using it last night with shorts - after an hour or so got sort of warm but not really to the point that it was unusable. With pants, should be no issue.

 

Well, I do ususally wear pants on the train, so I should be good.

Thanks for the info guys. It's a big help!

Ward

 

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree, this notebook after a while actually gets burning hot. Another very hot spot I noticed was the back of the LCD, it gets uncomfortably hot thats something I find quite alarming!

 

Thats not the case with mine. I havent noticed any unberable heat. Maybe you are more sensitive to heat or maybe I have used a hotter running notebook(Acer 3003). Currently my laptop has been on for ~45min or so and I can comfortably touch the any part on the underside of the notebook. The bottom back/front of screen gets hot due to the presence of the backlight which if you have kept it on max brightness will get hot. This is common in all notebooks which use a backlight. Also the top half of the exhaust vent is angled up, so whenever the fan runs te hot air is directly in contact with the screen(when it is open).

If you are feeling the heat on the front left it is most definately due to the HDD. IF you are lucky and have a Fujitsu(like I did) then it will run a lot cooler than a similar Segate/WD or Hitachi.

 

I just bought the V3019US model and it's working great so far. The only drawback are the bunch of crap they installed on it. So i'm planning on doing a clean install of winxp pro on it and was wondering where I can get all the drivers

 

The drivers are included in the C:\SWSetup folder. Create a backup copy of this folder and you have all the necessary drivers to do a clean reinstall of the OS.

 

I just encountered a program while burning the recovery disk to dvd-r. For some reason it keep saying that an error has occur while burning disk 1 and wouldn't continue to burn. Is it really necessary to have the restore disk? And what happen to the 10gb partition that on the hdd if do the clean install?
Thanks.

 

Try another DVD. It happended to me a couple of times untill I tried a different brand. The recovery discs are only needed if you want to restore the system back to factory state. I would call HP and complain about the software not being able to burn the discs. Thye might send a copy of the discs for free or they might charge you ~20$ for the set.

If you reinstall with your own copy then the recovery partition will not be accessible since the MBR would have been overwritten so you wont be able to access it even if you left the partition untouched during the reinstall.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll try another brand of dvd. So when I'm reinstalling would it be better for me to delete the recovery partition since i will get more hdd space?

 

Yes, as long as you have burnt the DVD's. I did the same and now I have a single partition for my data and a 1GB Quickplay partition.

 

I've noticed that when I'm simply playing Simcity 3000 for a while on the computer, the bottom left hand side of the screen, on the backside, gets incredibly hot, burning hot in fact. The same goes for parts of the botton of the notebook. I have heard that the AMD Turions run considerably hotter than the Intel Pentiums and Cores.

Has this hapened to any of you guys that own this model? How is your notebook holding up Miner?

 

Yeah, I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with that, mine's gets very hot after a while, wouldn't dare to use it on my lap without some protection, the bottom gets burning hot to me!

But otherwise stable, no operational issues.

 

Ya, I was playing nba live and the upper left corner of the bottom got rather warm but it was still very bearable. I don't know if it just me but the screen seem to have sort of a glare when you not looking at it directly in front but rather looking down at it. O ya i ran 3dmark05 and got a score of 596.

 

I tried my friends one over the past weekend playing some random games. Very shiny.. the left palm rest got warm, but not very hot to the point of being unbearable.

 

Just an FYI. There is a new BIOS update(F10) available for the V3000z...

Fixes a couple of minor bugs. Nothing too important...

 

Missed this review earlier, but I have to say it (and the ensuing thread) is very informative. Great review miner!

 

hmmm i found something interesting, on windows system properties it said i have 960 mb of ram but when i check the vram it say i have 256... i'm a little confused. i thought the 6150 is all shared memory.

 

The graphics memory is dynamic, meaning it will only use the full 256MB as and when needed.

 

Thanks for the great review miner, it really helped me make the decision to buy the v3000. I only have 1 problem, I'm stuck between the v3000t and the v3000z. I can get both for around the same price. The t has the advantage with its core solo 1350 with battery life and a 20gb biggger HD as well as more RAM. The problem is it's got the crappy GMA950 which I've heard is really...bad. I actually prefer the sempron mobile 3400+ but I know it will lose about an hour of battery life. Ideas? Thanks

 

Depends on what kind of battery life you are looking for in the laptop. The "z" should last on average around 2.5hrs with the Wifi on and general basic use. If you need more than 3hrs then your choices are clear, either get the 12 cell battery or the "t" model. But if you look at the dv2000t review, the reviewer states a battery life around 2.5hrs for the dv2000t(HP version of the Compaq V3000t) with the GMA 950. So, battery life of an hour extra over the 'z' might not be capable in real world use.

As for the GMA 950, it is fine as long as you dont want to play modern games. The 6150 is still much better but if all you are going to use the computer for suerfing the web, word, play DVD"s, old games then it should do just fine. It is also supposed to be Vista compatible but does not support either Pure Video or H.264 decoding(6150 does) which is used in both Bluray/HD DVD..

In any case, both the 'z' & 't' are pretty good systems for general use. Consider the TX2/C2D if you can afford it.

 

Battery life of over 3 hours is not that important to me overall, I would use it more as a portable workstation as my school has a lot of AC ports all over the place. After looking at that dv2000t review, I guess the battery lives are similar, so thanks for that link. I guess my other remaining concern would be that the Core Solo has 2mb L2 cache where my sempron would only have 256kb. Do you think there would be a real-world, noticable difference between the 2 processors? Thanks in advance.

 

The Core Solo will be faster, not because of the cache but because of its architecture. AMD processors do not require huge amounts of cache since the memory controller is located on die and so they have faster, direct accees to RAM when compared to Intel where they have to go through the northbridge(chipset) which makes it slower. In order to mask this inefficiency, they need bigger caches.

It will make noticable difference in applications which need proecessong power like if you are into encoding videos or heavily cache dependant programs(Photoshop for example). But general purpose programs(Office, firefox, IE etc..) you will not notice much difference in the performance.

 

Thanks for all the help miner, I really appreciate it. I forgot to mention that this laptop would only be a secondary work laptop, I have a nice AMD FX desktop to handle anything that needs CPU power or gaming. I hope you don't mind another question... I have heard that both the gma and 6150 are vista capable.. but also that the gma950 will not be able to run Aero well. I guess I'm asking your opinion on vista and which laptop to buy.

 

The 950 should run Vista aero, how well - I dont know since I havent used the 950 to run Aero. The 6150 on the other hand is definately capable, I have been using it ever since RC1 was released. It runs pretty well, although Aero hogs a lot of RAM, so be sure to have atleast 1GB(ideally 2GB), if you want to run Vista smoothly.

 

Thanks again miner. I've decided to just go for the Mobile Sempron 3400+ and the integrated nvidia 6150. Wanted to ensure it was future proof with 64 bit and Vista capable. Battery life should be comparable and I wouldn't use it on the go anyhow. Thanks again and maybe when I get it I can post a review..

 

Good luck and reviews are always welcome. Check out this link for tips and contact info if and when you want to do the review...
http://www.notebookreview.com/writeReview/

 

Hi,
Is there any body know what type of audio it comes with? When I searched Google, it just shows Conexant high definition audio, but I want to know what type of audio chip it is, such at SigmaTel 9200 or SigmaTel 9250.

Thanks.

 

Bought my mom a V3000T (Core Duo 1.66, 512 RAM, 60 GB HDD) this week for her birthday. Quite pleased with it usability-wise, but especially in the looks and value department.

The reasons I went for the core duo model was performance and battery life. The Core Duo outperforms the Turion X2 by a significant margin clock for clock in most cpu-intensive apps, and it uses less power into the bargain (I regularly get 4-4.5 hours web surfing on the laptop compared to a friend with the Turion X2 version who says he gets 3 hrs tops with it). Although in all fairness, it's possible that the GeForce chipset is also to blame (nv's desktop chipsets consume significanlty more power than intel's - this may also prove true for their laptop chipsets). In games, I expect the GeForce to outperform the intel GMA, although we're probably talking about snail versus tortoise speeds at this level. Also, the core duo version comes with Bluetooth, whereas I'm told the Turion doesn't.

A few niggles about the laptop, though. Firstly, the DVD drive "chirps" whenever it spins up. It's incredibly maddening, although it's fortunately whisper-quiet once it's in motion (eg watching a dvd).

The trackpad surface is also uncomfortable to use. Paradoxically, it has too much friction because the surface is too smooth, meaning more of it grabs onto the skin of your fingers. I find the traditional textured trackpads more less tiresome to use.

Also, I've come to the conclusion that "widescreen" trackpads are just a marketing gimmick thought up by an industrial designer. Using windows, you spend much more time moving the cursor up/down (menus, start bar, scroling) than left/right. I'm always cursing when I run out of space because the trackpad on the compaq isn't deep enough. Although that's the price you pay for the form factor (the laptop can't accomodate a deeper trackpad with the speakers taking up room on the top surface).

The gloss screen is a reflective nightmare in difficult lighting conditions. When I was setting up the laptop at work, I was picking up reflections from PC monitors and fluorescent lights around me. When I use it outdoors, it serves as a better mirror than a screen - but hey, at least I won't get caught out with asparagus between my teeth . Colours are also a little washed out (I have the LG screen). However, it is incredibly crisp, and *amazing* for movie playback.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with my purchase. Most importantly, my mom loves it. I'll still stick to my trusty 3-year-old thinkpad for heavy duty work, however (especially if I have to go outside).

Cheers,
V.

 

Just bought the v3000z last week with the amd x2 and a gig of ram. Its on its way and now the notebook is sold out till october 30th! yahoo!! I will post my opinion soon when it arrives. I plan on replacing the original gig of ram for 2 gigs of corsair ram.

 

The box arrived today (all excited), but no notebook was inside. now hp cant ship it until next week and they have to do an investigation. although i love the notebook and cant wait to get it, i doubt i will ever buy a compaq notebook from hpshopping.com, cant believe fedex and hp both couldnt tell a computer didnt weigh only a couple ounces. So FRUSTRATED!!!

 

lol a box with no computer, now thats funny

 

wow, that sucks man. Just some bad luck I guess... On the positive note though, most ppl still haven't received their HPs ordered recently (including me) and you'll probably get your replacement pretty quick

 

I've had the Compaq V3000 since it was first released. I have to be honest, I much prefer my old Compaq X1000 notebook (which is still going strong) overall. Price wise these two notebooks are comparible. The X1000 has a much better screen. The X1000 runs much cooler, the X1000 is much more solidly (albeit a bit heavier ) built, the X1000 has a quieter CD/DVD, the X1000 has a better touchpad. Yeah, no quickplay on the X1000, but I rarely use that feature anyway. IMO, for the average person who doesn't need the dual processing power, and just emails, browses the internet, word processes, etc - I just don't see the V3000 as anything special. No disrespect to anyone's decision to buy the Compaq V3000 - I did because my X1000 is getting really old (but it continues to function beautifully). Wish I could have bought a second Compaq X1000 in new condition instead of the V3000.

 

hey miner, I just recieved my v3000z today and I'm just starting the reformat process. When you leave the 1gb partition for quickplay, did you have to use partition magic or just the standard windows xp cd? Is is on the hard drive already and I can just leave it alone? Thanks.

 

Windows XP partition manager should do fine. I would start off clean, delete all the partitions and then recreate the 1GB Quickplay partition(just leave it as unpartitioned space) and use the rest for Windows.

 

Miner, when i finally get my notebook (what a hassle with HP, not a good experience, but their executive office employees are really nice), If i format the drive and leave 1 GB unpartitioned, does windows install the quickplay drivers or are they provided by hp to install again? Also if i set up 3 partitions, 1 for windows, another for linux and another for quickplay, do i install windows on 1 partition and then later can i install linux on the unpartitioned space? and for the 1gb unpartitioned left, do you install that once your on the windows desktop? Thanks for your time, cant wait to get the notebook! its on rush delivery!

mike

 

If you want to use Linux then forget about Quickplay(directplay). It wont work(atleast it didnt when I tried). Quickplay only works if you have only 1 OS - Windows XP. It does not work if you dual boot or run it with any other operating system. But if you dont care about the directplay feature, then QP within Windows works without any issues.

As for installing Quickplay, it is not automatic. You will need to install it manually from the installation files located in the SWSetup folder. There are 2 installation packages - the first(QPW) installs Quickplay within Windows and the second installs Quickplay directplay(HPQPDP) on the unpartitioned space. You will also need to install Quicklaunch software(QLW) if you want to configure the QP button to launch Quickplay.

 

Thanks for all the help again Miner. Spent most of last night installing windows, finding drivers, etc. The video driver is weird because the newest forceware is supposed to support it but it won't install automatically. Then if you go in and do it manually through device manager it works? (does the v3000z have the 6150 or 6150 le btw?) Anyway, everything went pretty smoothly, the quickplay partition works and everything else works great. Can we d/l the chipset driver for the nforce 430 from nvidia and use that? Lastly, my spacebar is crooked and the right side is about 2mm higher than the left. Kinda weird but I don't know if hassling through a replacement is worth it...thanks again.

 

The drivers found on Nvidia dont support the mobile GPU's(other than Go 7900) since they are taken care of by the OEM(HP). So, the only official drivers are provided by HP and they usually do not use the latest forcewares. They currently list 84.61 on HP's support site. But you can still use the nvidia forcewares without any issues. The exact name of the GPU is Geforce Go 6150. I havent tried the nforce chipset driver from Nvidia but I assume the same sort of situation(as the geforce) exists there as well. But it should work nonetheless in most cases.

The keyboard quality varies, I have found mine to be pretty good, but I had a dv2000t previously which had a very flexy keyboard. If the spacebar does not bother you then keep it, no point in returning it just for a new keyboard.

 

Okay, so everything seems to be working great now. Now the only problem is that my screen looks kinda weird. It's the SEC model and on the upper side, there is some minor, digital distortion. Sigh...

edit: yea, stupid me, it was just that the default color setting was at Medium (16bit).

 

does anyone know if the v3000z comes with any power management software? Right now it doesn't seem to estimate my battery life or let me change my power preferences besides the windows one.