Customer Reviews

Compaq Presario 2140US Laptop (1.80-GHz Athlon XP-M 2200+, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just picked this notebook up last week and I am pretty impressed so far. It's not the best notebook you can buy (hence the 4 out of 5 stars I gave), but you can't beat it for the price right now.

I did notice the off-balance noise problem with the CD-ROM drive, but it only came up once when I was reading from a CD-R. Perhaps the specific media or speed involved made it rattle, but it doesn't appear to come up very often.

I ran a few benchmarks on the machine and here's a summary of my results along with other comments:

CPU: The CPU is roughly comparable to the desktop version of the Athlon 2200+ and Intel P4 2.4 GHz. However, Intel solidly outperforms AMD at cache operations. For those of you concerned about buying an AMD laptop instead of an Intel, there isn't much to worry about because the CPU will not likely be the cause of bottlenecks anyway(see below).

Memory: The memory performance compares to some of the slower PC2100 controllers in desktop machines. It is only about 20-30% faster than most desktop PC133 controllers. Don't expect extremely fast memory performance.

Video: I didn't run any benchmarks on the video system, but I did load up a 3D game and see how it did. You shouldn't expect to outfrag your friends on this baby, but the performance is pretty good. The video performance will be limited by the speed of the RAM which, as mentioned above, is not very good for DDR.

Hard Drive: Hard drive performance is a bit weak. The hdd and controller compare to an ATA66 controller or a USB 2.0 hdd hooked up to a desktop. I suppose you should expect this kind of performance in a notebook hdd where so much disk space has to be crammed into a tiny volume.

Other: The display is great -- it even looks a little better than the one on my Dell that cost twice as much when I bought it a few years ago. You've got lots of handy buttons and cool looking lights. My favorite feature is the volume control and mute button on the left side of the computer. The keyboard feels great and looks nice and sturdy.

The tough thing about buying a laptop is you have to get one that doesn't only meet your needs now, but also will meet your needs in 3 years because you can't simply upgrade parts that get old. Though this PC is not completely top of the line, it is priced at about $500 less than other laptops that are just a little bit better. Even though this laptop will probably be obsolete a year sooner than a more expensive PC, at least I'll have $500 in the bank ready to buy that new laptop when I need to.

I was looking at buying a Dell, but every time I'd configure the options I wanted, the price jacked up to 1800+. So, I figured I'd wait till the newer Centrinos settled in a bit and picked up this puppy instead for about a grand.

The display is great, and can be viewed at all angles. I've had no problem playing DVD's using the included DVD player. I noticed no blurring during fast motion sequences while playing DVD movies. I haven't tried many 3d games, but Ragnarok plays as well as it does on my Desktop. As far as the sound goes, it's a laptop, and without headphones it still sounds very clear and loud; without much bass though (like most laptops).

It's as heavy as most power notebooks. With 40 gig hard disk, 512 meg memory, DVD/CD RW, 15" TFT screen, 1.8Mhz Athlon, 64meg ATI Radeon 4xAGP 3d graphics, built in 10/100 Ethernet, 7.5 pounds isn't too bad.

No Firewire port or 802.11b wireless built in. Both of those would be nice features to have. But, for the price, it's a damn nice laptop.

I realize nobody may read this review at this late date but thought I would share my experience with this machine. I have owned it 4 years now and it is still running STRONG, especially acconting for tech progress over 4 yrs. I have upgraded memory to 1 gig which helped the Windows XP performance tremendously. Another tip I received is whenever I run on external power, I remove the battery, hence I still get approx 2hrs runtime on the ORIGINAL battery. I run the included battery optimizer every 3 months. (nice feature which Compaq no longer includes with it's laptops).
It still handles all basic computing duties (internet surfing, email, playing and burning dvd's and cd's etc. I have also added a USB wireless adaptor as the original epansion slot was ruined by a bad network card. I have kept it updated with all Microsoft and Compaq updates as they came out and also run Webroot Antivirus and Spyware remover programs.
In total, this thing has been rugged and reliable after 4 years of service and it still runs strong. It is the main reason I have bought 3 more HP/Compaq laptops since then to handle various other duties.