Customer Reviews

Compaq Presario 920US Laptop (1.67 GHz Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drive)

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

 

 

First, the Athlon XP 2000+ outperforms a 2Ghz P4 in most tasks. Second, the video card uses shared system memory. This means that the 16MB is taken from the 512MB used for normal memory. Third, you are not stuck with only 16MB of video memory. I keep mine set at 64MB which is equal to or more than any other laptop video card.

To change the amount of memory dedicated to graphics, press F10 at the beginning of the boot process. Under the "Advanced" tab you will see an option that says something like "AGP aperture size". It will have options for 16, 32, or 64MB. The integrated graphics are decent, but they are now oficially 2 generations old (The newest being the Mobile Radeon 9000). This card performs like a Radeon 7000 (the original Radeon) for the desktop.

I play Neverwinter Nights, Counter-Strike, and Unreal Tournament without problems on this laptop. UT 2003 works, but it is a little slower than I like.

To begin with, it looks great. It's black & silver, sleek & reasonably svelte at 6.5 lbs. The HP genes are apparent in its design and the result is pleasing. The CPU is an adequate 1.67 Athalon XP; it's quite capable of most daily, non-graphics intense tasks, but not as good as an Intel P4. System memory is provided by a very fast 512 megs of DDRAM. The hard drive is a generous 40 gigs. A DVD/CD-R/W combination drive in included. All the Compaq's connections are in the right place, though missing throughout the entire 9xx line is any USB 2.0 port. The video card is a bit small for the other components of the 920, with a 16 meg ATI card onboard driving a 15" active matrix display. (I am a fan of ATI graphics cards because they have been quite reliable over the long haul and because upgrading them from ATI's nice website is a snap. However, this machine should have been given at least 32 megs of video RAM) Overall, this is a very good machine made by a company that looks like it's here to stay.

Its 1.79 inches thick NOT 1.5 inches. And it probably weighs more than 6.5lbs they claim...

Runs too hot and display is very grainy compared to other budget laptops. not to mention noisy hard disk from fujitsu and badly designed keyboard & useless ovalpad...

Compaq support is above average though.

Very good value for the price--AMD beats Intel any day of the week for tasks other than video editing. It's great for all that's there--a CD/RW combo drive, generous amounts of memory and hard drive storage space, but be warned that this latest incarnation of the Compaq Presario series comes without a 3.5" floppy drive. Fine if you've moved past it for things like CD-RWs and network-based storage, but if you still use floppies, consider either an external drive or contact HP to see if they have a swappable floppy drive that can go in the CD-RW drive's place when you need to use it.