Customer Reviews

Compaq Presario 2100US Laptop (1.60-GHz Celeron, 256 MB RAM, 30 GB Hard Drive)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Compaq Presario 2100US Notebook PC is not top of the line notebook but it's not bad at all. For the price it's a very good value for money (Mail-in Rebate + Free external floppy drive from HPShopping.com after mail-in rebate). I did comparison-shopping between multiple Compaq Presario's and Toshiba Satellite's and went with this one because of the following:

PROS:
1. Reasonable Configuration
1.1) Intel Celeron (1.6 GHz) is not a bad processor. In today's race for 2.4+ Pentium P4s you have to pay at least two hundred bucks more just to acquire a better processor. In my opinion, it's not worth the price unless your needs are business-critical.
1.2) 256MB DDR SDRAM is good enough to start with; 512 would be better. Anyway, it's expandable to 1 GB, so when the memory prices drop, upgrade it!
1.3) A 14.1-in XGA TFT display screen is not too small when compared with 15"
1.4) 30GB enhanced-IDE hard disk drive, a DVD+CD-RW combo drive. Video Graphics Card and sound-quality are OK
1.5) An integrated 56K modem and 10/100 Ethernet network card etc.

2. Good Looks
- I like it's light-gray looks

CONS
1. Touch pad mouse is not friendly at all. Other brands offer better precision.
2. Pre-installed CD burner software cannot burn Data CD's - it presents options for music CD's etc. I still need to install some other software's and play with them to burn Data CD's
3. Some people may find cooling-fan and hard-disk a little noisy & annoying - Being a computer professional I'm OK with those
4. Tons of useless software is preinstalled for you that you may not use in your life. Many software's will ask you to buy their full versions for enhanced-features.

Many people buy bigger & better machines that they don't really need. If 2100US fits your requirements then it's a good buy for its competitive price!

This notebook computer is certainly a great way to go for anyone looking for a low-cost, home laptop.

The processor is certainly fast enough to accomplish most anything typical home users are planning on doing. As long as you are not planning on running several RAM eating programs (e.g., Adobe Illustrator and Freehand) simultaneously you will never really occur to you to call your computer is "slow." I am running a full Microsoft Office Suite and programs like Adobe Photoshop (also Elements) and have not run into any significant memory or speed issues.

The computer runs a little slow at start up, but otherwise it moves right along. I would recommend not installing every little program that you can on this (or any machine) since doing so will chip away at your memory and create a slower and less stable system over time.

The touch pad isn't the greatest I've used, but there is a nicely placed mouse port so I can use my favorite mouse most of the time anyway.

Compared to other notebooks, the keyboard is certainly up to par, though not as nice as some desktop keyboards (which you could also easly plug into the notebook).

I'm not sure why the other review was unable to find an adequate CD burning utility. It has Roxio which is fine for music, data, or CD-RW burning.

The screen plays DVDs very nicely, while the computer has several DVD player pre-installed to choose from.

I am very happy with this machine. It's certainly not as powerful as comparably-priced desktop machines, but I'll the slight differences in performance to have the portablity. (The battery has about 3.5 hours of life when fully charged.)

Like any computer, getting rid of the pre-loaded promotional software (AOL et al) is annoying. But the money Compaq gets from these placements means I was able to secure a great quality notebook for [a great price]. It's a great way to go.

Although on paper, this computer seems to be a powerful computer with a great deal of features, in practice, the gains of these features are destroyed when you consider the computer's unreliability. In the first 4 months that I owned this machine, the sound card speaker outlet became loose internally and ceased to function. The CD-RW drive refuses to fixate any CDs, despite the fact that I have used multiple pieces of software. I have attempted to update the firmwire on this drive, but it does not solve the problem. The battery also failed, and ran for only 20 minutes. I brought my computer in for repairs, but after waiting 3 days, I was told that the sound card problem could not be fixed, and I would have to pay to replace the entire motherboard. They insunuated that I had caused the breakage, alluding to an abstract concept they invented called "physical damage". The only physical damage that occured was due to the poor and unacceptable design of the sound card outlet. Regarding my CDRW drive, they told me it was working perfectly. At the time, I assumed that meant they fixed it for me, however, it still refuses to write. I'm very upset that they lied to me regarding the CDRW drive. The did however, replace the battery. In the end, I ended up spending 60 dollars on a USB sound card that is also unreliable. Instead of having a convinent and easy to use laptop, I've ended up with a laptop that requires 3 wires at all time to keep it running, and is useless at burning CDs. I'm very dissapointed at the Customer Service Centre. It has been of almost no use to me, and has not taken responsibility for the shortcomings of this computer.

I urge anyone considering this product to look to another brand that does not use cheap low-quality parts and cuts corners with its customer service department. I will never buy another compaq.

I was VERY happy with this computer for the first 7 months until it crashed. Come to find out that out of 300 students at my law school, 7-8 have had power failures on their Compaq laptops (and very few students have Compaqs in the first place). Please ask around before you purchase this computer because unbeknownst to me Compaq (now HP) has apparently tried to reduce costs on notebooks and it shows!
I will give it 2 stars because luckily it crashed within its warranty (unluckily 2 weeks before exams!) and the tech support people were helpful and I can send it for repairs for free. However, many of my classmates have not been so lucky...

I purchased this machine in November. It seemed like a very good deal at that time with the mail-in rebate and all. If I were to buy a laptop today however, this would not be my first choice. Consider this:

1) IBM, Toshiba and Dell have fewer quality issues than Compaq, and Toshiba and Dell both have celeron models that cost about the same as Compaq.
2) While this computer is working fine for me, I have noticed a few problems. i) The power cord is extremely loose at the contact. A slight pull on it will cause it to disengage. Your machine will be running slow and screen brightness will drop. You may not notice this and it will drain your bettery. ii) The keyboard has a terrible feel to it. Easily the worst keyboard I have used on laptops. It takes twice as much pressure for a keypress than other laptops. I just bought an external keyboard iii) USB ports refuse to recognize my external mouse a lot of times. I have to keep plugging it again.
So buy this only if you are getting an exceptional deal on it. I would certainly go for the Toshiba Celeron model if I were in the market today...

I agree with the others who complain that this laptop has more cons than pros. It comes loaded with too many software programs that you'll never use. The floppy drive and cd drive are very flimsy. (The cd drive makes an uncomfortable grinding sound.)The touchpad is extremely difficult to use. And, sadly, I must join the list of owners who had one just die--completely die--on them soon after the warranty expired. I was livid. For a couple of hundred dollars more, I could easily have purchased a more durable and reliable laptop.

I bought one of these in May 2003 because at the time it was the most cost effective purchase in the store. It has performed faultessly since I bought it; however, I use it a lot for memory intense photography work and had to upgrade the memory early on because it was not working properly for this application. Once done, the machine has been incredibly reliable and goes EVERYWHERE with me: US, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Only the limited RAM prevents this laptop from getting my fifth star.

It is a pretty good laptop for this price. However, it does contain some down sides. First of all, the battery only lasts about 2 hours (if you're lucky), even though it says three. Also, the time often gets screwed up (it gets behind) and you have to reset it constantly. This laptop, however, runs fairly fast and basically everything else about it is positive.

It's just simply a great all round value.

The 2100US is more than fast enough with an Intel Celeron 1.6 processor and a handy 256 MB of the better DDR SDRAM memory. It's pretty quick and very easy to use out of the box as well, with Windows XP installed. And it will also run Linux and Redhat 7.3 ... and all the other relevant applications that I can think of! Who needs more than this? Perhaps only big time, state of the art, latest gamer types, running extremely high speed complex 3D grahics. Try this notebook computer out. IMHO, you will love it! I sure do!

I have had my 2100US for more than a year now and I love it, I am quite happy with it. Ofcourse there are some cons like the battery time but I got a free battery from best buy when I bought it, so works fine for me. It is fast, pretty quick and very easy to use.