Compaq v3000z Review (pics, specs)

duh, sorry i forgot to put that in there

the ram is the g.skill for ~$90 per gig

 

Thanks. Looks like the price has dropped by about $20 per gig @ newegg since your purchase.

 

yup, thats a great deal then

 

I would like to share my vista experience with everyone.

I purchased the v3000z with the tl-50, and 1 gig of ram.

i also got the imprint finish.

everything seemed fine but for some reason it still felt kinda slow under XP.

I purchased vista buisiness the day it came out and installed it with out problems. Vista seemed quick untill i installed the drivers.

So dissapointed i went out and bought 2 gig of ram and a 7200rpm hitachi drive 60 gig.

ok so it sped up a little.

but i noticed the harddrive light constantly on and the drive being accessed alot. and load times!!! well when i say vista is loaded i mean everything. vista is not loaded all the way untill the harddrive is idle as far as im concerned.

well that part took forever. and looking at vistas advanced tab in the task manager i noticed the harddrive was at 100% duty cycle and ram was at 900 meg usage.

looking around on the net (i was ready to ditch vista at this point soooooo sloooooow)

i found articles on 2 services called superfetch and windows search.

after disabling these 2 services i was pleased that vista was almost as fast as xp, but something was still missing!

so i decided to ditch the drivers from hp and install all the drivers from windows update.

the only drivers i used from hp were the wireless/bluetooth, ricoh secure digital, and the driver which controls the buttons for volume, ect.

i used the chipset driver directly from nvidia found here

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winvista32_15.00G.html

and this made even more of a difference in performance.

Don't forget that i disabled superfetch and windows search.

ok so i was pretty happy but still missing something.

then some how i stumbled on a utility for the hitatchi harddrives that come in this laptop. WOW! i was able to turn up the performance on my harddrive BIG TIME!

I did purchace a 7200rpm hitachi harddrive but....................

initially my laptop came with a 5400rpm 40 gig hitachi harddrive and the tweaks worked on this drive also.

now i am a happy camper.

laptop is as fast as it should be now.

i know the CPU is available up to a tl-64. but the tl-64 is not available to the public yet.

im hoping for a tl-68 or tl 72. as i feel 2.4-2.6 ghz would be worth upgrading from a 1.6 that i have now.

my home system is a pentium d running at 2.66ghz OC to 3.0.

NOTE: my father ordered the same laptop that i did but his laptop came with a western digital harddrive 60 gig. such a shame as he was excited to get a boost in performance and it was a big letdown.

ok here are links to the articles on superfetch and windows search.

Keep in mind you can turn them back on anytime you like but once you turn them off i believe you will be spoiled by the performance.

here are some very interesting articles about superfetch and windows search and why you should disable it.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

http://4sysops.com/archives/how-to-disable...windows-search/

http://www.nsharp.org/09/vista-tips-and-tricks-1/

all great articles. read with care because very important points are made


woops i almost forgot.

hitachi harddrive tweaks

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you want to creat the bootable cd for windows.

it is an iso image so after you dowload it double click on it and You're burning software will prompt you to install a blank cd

here is a link to the page

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

and for those of you who get lost on the page here is a direct link to the download

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/ftool_204.iso

this is a bootable cdrom that detects all drives. even sata drives.

turn on all options to MAX

here is a link to the pdf guide in case you want to take a look before hand

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_203.pdf

It does not matter what pc you use this works for all pc's with hitachi drives!!!

**** my vista laptop is noticably quicker now!!!!

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Thanks for reading!!

 

i would like to mention that disabling superfetch and windowssearch made the biggest performance gain PERIOD!

 

i'm having trouble choosing between the core duo, turionx2 or the core2duo. The amd is priced between the core duo and core2duo. Is is worthwhile to upgrade it to core2duo? Or is it better to choose the amd with nvidia 6150? When comparing the Nvidia 6150 to the gma 950, is difference noticeable?

 

Well, it depends on what you to use the system for. The difference between the Core Duo and Turion X2 is noticable if you are utilizing the full cpu as in encoding video/audio and in scientific calculations. In everyday usage, not much - typical applications will open up the same in either processor. Any difference is not noticable for the average user. But if you are looking for the fastest processor at any cost then buy the C2D, otherwise the X2's are still a very good processor. As for as the comparision between the GMA 950 & geforce 6150, the 6150 is much better and is one of the best integrated graphcis processors. But still if you are expecting to play games at their best settings then look for dedicated graphics over the integrated ones anyday.

 

thanks for the reply. Right now, I'm considering either the turion X2 or the c2d. The X2 are priced only slightly lower. I don't do any encoding but do use programs like macromedia and occasionally, photoshop. Most probably getting vista premium with the aero interface and looking to play some low-end games. But due to budget constraints, I can't afford to get a dedicated graphics card. Should i choose the much faster c2d with gma 650 or the turion X2 with the better nvidia 6150?

 

If you only play low end games but use photoshop, I'd get the C2D+GMA. Photoshop will take advantage of the CPU, and low-games will play ok on the GMA.

Just to be clear: what low end games are we talking?

 

Games like football manager. I'm pretty sure both gma 650 and nvidia 6150 can support that.

 

Hello again!
I have some kind of problem with my nvidia go 6150. I don't know why, but I think that its overheating all the time (funs running all the time). I left my laptop running only defragmentng harddrive (external). When I left the temperature was still at 98C.
In my opinion its to high when GPU is doing nothing.
Anyone could help with this problem?

Thanks

R

 

98C at idle is a bit too high for the Go 6150. At idle it sould be ~70C or below. If the laptop is still under warranty I would definately contact HP and send the laptop in for service. Alternatively if you dont want to do that you could try by reapplying the thermal paste/pad. Sometimes it might be a simple as improperly seated heatsink causing the problems. But doing this would void your warranty.

 

I'm about to buy a pre-owned notebook with this model and have some questions in mind:

Is the standard finish (sigh) pretty enough? It would really help if someone can post or point me to a standard finish pic.

Can one upgrade the Sempron processor to an AMD turion 64 X2?

Thanks.

 

I'm thinking to buy this laptop for my sister
it's good price for the spec. AMD, nvidia.
the problem is I dont trust compaq. I heard bad thing about them. and also I have had $2000 + laptop. so i dont know how $800 laptop looks like.
I just dont want this laptop break down in just few months

so what do you think guys?

 

The standard finish is pretty decent. From a distance it would be hard to make out a standard from an imprint finish.

Standard finish on the left & imprint on the right


Standard finish


Imprint Finish


The Sempron can be upgraded to a Turion X2.

These days Compaqs are nothing but a brand name existing under HP. For all practically purposes you are buying a HP designed laptop. I have had mine for ~8 months now and couldnt have been happier.

 

Subtle look is where it's at for me, I prefer Standard.

So in your case, I'd go with the Imprint finish.

 

Thanks a lot Miner.

How is it in playing High Def movie files like QuickTime trailers? I love playing some before lectures to wake people up.

The other sad thing about the standard finish are the things I would be losing out like mic in and speaker out, 1 USB, Slider, quick play.

 

Quicktime HD plays just fine, no skipping or any issues. Just make sure you have 512MB or more RAM for XP and 1GB+ if you want to use Vista. A cut down version of Quickplay is still included with the standard finish but that can only play DVD's and does not have the bootable option.

 

Is there a PCMCIA slot I'm planning to use this device:



since there are no mic in and earphone/speaker outs.
Thanks.

 

No, there is only an ExpressCard slot, no PCMCIA.

 

Hey, I think this is my first post. I found this site through Google. I own a V3000Z 2.0 Turion 64 AMD w/ 2gb ram. A few days ago my USB drives went haywire. They just suddenly started saying they didn't recognize anything I plugged in and kept giving me the "this device will work faster if plugged into a hi-speed port" message. I'm getting kind of desperate now as my USB Flash Drive actually got noticeable slower since that day. I also use eboostr {eboostr.com} and it keeps warning me of a low read speed further confirming that the USB drives are 'slower.' After reading all 17pages of this forum, I finally found this reply which seems to be the same problem I have. I went on hp.com to try to find the said USB driver wayneb was talking about but couldn't find it. Can someone give me a link and does anyone know why the USB ports would just "downgrade" to 1.1 like that? I tried calling customer support but my warrantee has already expired (got mine Nov 2006) and they said they couldn't help me without charging me 50 bucks. I also opted for the Nvidia productivity ports when I got the V3000 and that one is doing the same the other two are doing.

I looked through hp.com helps and they did mention something about an "Unknown Device" under the USB controllers in the Device Manager. I have that. Also, another bizarre thing -- when I right click one of the root hubs and go to the "power" tab, it shows that I have 8 ports...but I only have 3...and even with my external 4 port hub, it'd only make 7 ports.

helppp.

 

Well, AFAIK there arent any specific USB drivers other than the ones installed by Windows. You could try updating the chipset drivers from nvidia.com but first try uninstalling the USB hubs from the device manager and reboot the system. Windows should reinstall the drivers after a reboot and hopefully that should solve the issue, if not then you could try getting the system back to factory state by reformatting the HD(make sure to have a backup of important files/software) and if the problem still persists then it should a hardware issue with the USB ports.

 

I've got a problem with my v3000z.

It doesn't detect hard drive when I usually boot up my lap. It takes several restarts after it somehow detects the system and normally boots.

I've tried my hard drive on other lap and it worked just great...

Could it be hard drive controller? If not what could it be?

Regards,
Majo

 

I've had the V3000Z for 1 1/2 years and it is not durable. It is falling apart.

The left button on my track pad broke about 9 months ago. Ok, so I dealt and switched the buttons to be left handed. Well the second one is now dead. So I had to buy and use an external USB mouse. Kind of annoying, but not terrible.

The worst thing about this machine is that the stinking Wireless is now broken. It seems to be epidemic with this machine (and other HPs) if you do a search on wireless problems. HP says to update the BIOS. I did that. Nothing. Turns out, the machine probably needs a motherboard replacement.

The warranty is over, so I can't get it fixed for free. They extended the warranty on some models to two years, but somehow mine isn't covered.

So I have to send away my machine and pay them money to fix their crappy workmanship.

I am never buying another consumer grade HP. They are made like garbage.

 

Hello all,
So i have had my compaq v3019us for some time now. About 8 months ago we lost power in my house and my laptop was plugged into the surge protector.
After that happened my computer doesn't fully boot up what could be the problem with this?

Thank you.

 

What do you mean by doesnt fully boot? Does the indicator lights turn on or can you enter the bios? Was anything else connected to the surge protector? Does that device still work?

Try this:

Disconnect the power adapter and the battery from the system. Press and hold the power button for 10 - 15 sec and release it. Put the battery and power cord back and try restarting the system.

 

Looks nice, a bit slow processor tho.