Compaq Presario R3240US Laptop (2.00 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Drive)

by HP

Product Details

• Item Weight: 8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002H6V3Q
• Item model number: PF153UA#ABA
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 29, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

A true powerhouse in a portable package, the Compaq Presario R3240US notebook is powered by a 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor and has all the amenities you need to take everything with you on the road. A 60 GB hard drive and 512 MB RAM help you store files and run multiple applications efficiently, and the DVD+RW/CD-RW combo drive means you can perform a variety of application like backing up files on CD media, burning your own DVDs, making audio mix CDs, accessing CD- or DVD-ROMs, or watching DVD movies on the 15.4-inch widescreen LCD. It also features a built-in NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go graphics card, integrated JBL Pro Performance speakers, and a 5-in-1 Memory Reader to take care of your multimedia needs.

The Basics

• Hard Drive: The 60 GB hard drive has ample room to store all your files, including digital audio, video, and photos.
• Processor: The 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor can handle the toughest applications and has a 1 MB L2 cache.
• Memory: It has 512 MB DDR SDRAM to help you multitask with ease and is upgradable to 1.25 GB.
• CD/DVD Drive: The DVD+RW/CD-RW combo drive reads at 40x, writes at 16x, and rewrites CDs at 10x. It can also read DVD-ROMs at 16x.
• Keyboard & Mouse: It has a 101-key compatible keyboard and touch pad.
• Display: The 15.4-inch WXGA high definition LCD has resolutions up to 1280 x 800, making it ideal for watching DVDs.

Sound and Graphics
A built-in NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go graphics card with 64 MB dedicated video memory turns this notebook into a gaming machine. The integrated JBL Pro Performance speakers mean you can listen to crystal clear and bright audio right out of the box, whether you're listening to CDs or watching DVDs.

Connectivity and Expansion Slots
An integrated 10/100 Base-T ethernet allows for convenient networking, and 54g 802.11b/g wireless LAN means you can get online quickly, easily, and without wires. Additionally, there is a 5-in-1 integrated Memory Reader that reads SD MultiMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, and SmartMedia cards so you can share media with other people and devices. It also has the following external ports:

• 3 USB 2.0 ports for connecting to a wide range of peripherals, from digital cameras to MP3 players
• 1 parallel port for connecting to printers or cameras based on older technologies
• 1 IEEE 1394 FireWire port to connect to digital video cameras or other peripherals
• 1 notebook expansion port (Type I/Type II) for adding a variety of upgrades, including memory, modems, portable disk drives, and more
• 1 VGA video out port to connect to an external monitor
• 1 S-video out to connect your laptop to a television
• 1 audio out for headphones or speakers
• 1 microphone in port

Preloaded System and Software
The Compaq Presario R3240US notebook is powered by Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition. Windows XP Home Edition is packed with multimedia features to help you get your creative juices flowing. Windows Media Player lets you burn and play CDs, in addition to playing and organizing digital audio files. Windows MovieMaker is a basic video editing tool that helps you capture and edit digital video to save your memories and share them with others.

It also comes bundled with Symantec Norton Antivirus (with a complementary 60 days Live Update subscription), Adobe Acrobat Reader, RecordNow, InterVideo WinDVD, Apple iTunes and Apple iTunes Music Store, Adobe PhotoShop Album Suite, Microsoft Works, Microsoft Money, Microsoft Encarta Plus, and Intuit Quicken New User Edition.

Dimensions and Weight
It weighs 7.8 pounds and measures 14.25 x 11.18 x 1.8 inches (W x D x H).

What's in the Box
Presario R3240US notebook, 120 watt AC adapter, 8-cell Lithium-Ion battery, phone cord, user's manual, and warranty information.

Manufacturer

Get ahead of the curve with exceptional performance delivered by the AMD Athlon 64 processor 3200+ with PowerNow! Technology, 15.4" High-Definition Widescreen (1280 x 800) display and DVD+R/RW drive.

Advanced design to move you ahead
The Compaq Presario R3000 series notebook delivers all the power you need from a desktop PC without tying you down. With high-performance processors, wide screens and integrated high-speed wireless LAN - all at a great value in a streamlined design - you'll be ready to take on the ultimate challenge: a day in your demanding life. Engineered to perform

• AMD Athlon 64 processors enabled by HyperTransport technology with integrated DDR memory memory controller and PowerNow! technology deliver outstanding performance and extended system battery life. Relax with the knowledge of its built-in virus security for the next level of protection and compatibility with the next generation of Microsoft Windows XP 64-bit Edition software.
• AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor powers excellent system performance for productivity and multimedia applications.
• Enhanced IDE 60 GB (4200 RPM) hard disk drive stores demanding productivity applications with room to spare for up to 10,000 music tracks, 10,000 photos and 5 hours of video.
• 512 MB DDR SDRAM (2 DIMM) enables running several several applications seamlessly at the same time or excellent support of a demanding multimedia application. application.
• Full-size keyboard and touch pad with scroll and on/off buttons allows you to work comfortably and accomplish more.

Visual Impact

• 15.4" WXGA High Definition widescreen provides 30% more screen information than a 15.0" XGA and visibility of two applications side by side for greater productivity and multi-tasking. It provides a 33% wider viewing angle for more accurate, off-center viewing when sharing files with co-workers and clients.
• nVIDIA GeForce GeForce 4 440 Go graphics processor with 64 MB dedicated video memory supports excellent excellent performance for sharing presentations and DVD playback with greater scene realism and sharper sharper image detail.
• Integrated JBL Pro Performance speakers support sharp sound effects for presentations and great audio quality for DVDs and music.
• Integrated DVD+R/RW drive provides a fast and effective back-up solution with high-capacity DVDs holding up to 4.7GB of data.
• Integrated 5-in-1 digital media card reader supporting SD, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro and Smaredia cards enables you to share files with other devices including thumb drives, iPAQs and cameras.

Fast connections

• Integrated 54 G 802.11b/g WLAN with 125HSM / SpeedBooster support enables you to stay connected and productive on the go.
• Conveniently-placed integrated USB 2.0 ports provide fast connections to external devices.
• The IEEE 1394 port enables fast transfer of music and video files.
• The S-video port enables you to share multimedia presentations on TV.

Work/life acceleration

• Less is more: move through your day in exceptional style with the clean, minimalist design created created for maximum impact.
• Quicken New User's Edition enables you to manage your money efficiently.
• Included Adobe PhotoShop Album photo and imaging software makes it easy to edit your digital photos and put your best face forward.
• InterVideoWinDVD Creator allows you to capture, edit, author, and burn DVDs -- all from one easy-to-use interface. Then easily build transitions, add music and special effects and save your movie as as a DVD-ready MPEG-2 file with muvee autoProducer video-editing software.
• With Apple iTunes you can easily import songs from your favorite CDs, organize your CD and MP3 collection, create custom playlists right on your computer and much more. Expand your collection with the Apple iTunes Music Store Store(u) (offering more than 500,000 tracks from the five major music labels and 200 independent labels.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerhouse of a notebook!!, August 5, 2004

By 

T. Nelson "Amazon Lover" (Chgo, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Compaq Presario R3240US Laptop (2.00 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

I recently ordered this item direct from Compaq (shipped from China but only took 2 days), build time was about a week. Since I ordered a custom built, I got the 2.2ghz (3400+) Athlon 64 chip, 1GB ram, 60gb, 15.4" (upgraded resolution to 1680 x 1050), upgraded 8 cell battery to 12 cell battery, upgraded to 4X DVD+R burner.

Pros:
- LIGHTENING FAST FOR A LAPTOP - fastest I've ever used or seen.
- Great photo editing - images resize immediately and you can load many photos at once (I upgraded to 1GB RAM which really helps).
- Very attractive notebook, silver inside and dark black/blue outside.
- Screen is wonderful, bright, and viewing angle is excellent.
-Burner is fast and hasn't let me down.
-Keyboard is full size and very comfortable.
-Power cable is on the back - why should I have to see it anyway?
-3 USB 2.0 allow for very high speed transfers. 2 USB on left, 1 on right.
- Boots up fast, easy to get out of hibernation.
-GREAT BATTERY LIFE. Best I've seen, especially compared to a Dell I barely got 1 hour out of! For such a speedy notebook, when you hibernate it, it really conserves. All night in hibernation, away from A/C, I think it went down only 8% or less!
-SOLID notebook, doesn't feel cheap or flimsy.
-Speaker controls are nicely placed on the right hand side of the notebook. CD-RW/DVD-R is on the left side.
-Trackpad's scroll area is convenient and easy to use. It's also nice you can turn off the trackpad so when you're typing you don't accidentally hit it.




CONS:
-Why doesn't the built in media slot have a compact flash slot - the most common type of media? It would have been very handy.
- I use an external mouse, but when I use the trackpad's buttons, they're noisy.
-It's a bigger notebook, you'll notice it's size/weight, but how do you expect to get a powerhouse without having a bigger notebook?
-No other complaints.

Overall, I'd rate it a 9.5/10. First the speed is going to amaze you, then compare to other manufacturers, and you'll be amazed the deal you got.

PS - one note - I got XP home preinstalled, I thought when I got the notebook I'd upgrade to XP Pro (I already have a copy). It won't let you, the drivers for XP Pro are not on the notebook. I called tech. support and they said your hard drive is corrupt now and you have to reinstall. Luckily, I didn't install anything important yet. There's no huge different between Home and XP (besides networking) and I really don't feel like giving Microsoft another $50 of my hard earned $. I just would have liked to know I couldn't install Pro later.

Don't compare this to an Athlon "XP" notebook, it's not the same. Athlon 64 is much faster than Athlon XP. This is the Athlon "64" chip, allowing for constant 64-bit processing. It blows P4 chips out of the water with "hyper threading", which isn't active ALL the time. The Athlon 64 bit chip is! This is the future of notebooks! Athlons have always been speedier than P4's for much less money! You won't be let down.

This powerhouse of a notebook is so fast I still can't get over it.

PS. #2 - don't buy the service plan in stores like Best buy or even Circuit city. If you do buy a notebook from those retail stores, call Compaq/HP up and ask for THEIR service plan. For $299 (less than Best Buy) you can get "3-year HP Accidental Damage Protection with Express Repair extended service plan
Protect your investment from all forms of accidental damage for 3 years!". That includes droppings, spills, falls, surges, collisions, etc. If I was going to waste money on a service plan, it definitely be Compaqs Accidental and EXPRESS REPAIR than stupid Best buy's rip off for $350 that doesn't cover the battery or anything accidentally. And I've heard horrible things about their repairs - takes forever, months, they're general idiots!

Buy from Compaq directly, you'll be happier!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 4 years later !!!, January 5, 2009

By 

R. Murry (South Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Compaq Presario R3240US Laptop (2.00 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

This was the best notebook I ever owned. Just gave to my daughter for Fall 2008 semester at college. I would still take it over a new laptop with Vista for an OS. We did learn that dropping it off a table with the screen open can break the glass inside the screen and mess it up for using the laptop screen.

I just found a factory replacement screen for $69.99 on the internet and 40 minutes later good as new again. Yes there is better equipment out there and my alternative was a black MacBook to avoid buying Vista. The R3240US is now pretty cheap in the used markets, and given the ease they can be taken apart and repaired I may buy a couple of the used ones and have a good back-up with Win XP as well as a supply of parts. It really has lasted well other than the 3 foot drop test my kiddo subjected it to. No other problems with hardware and as for Windows, what can I say there!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice Laptop, July 13, 2005

By 

Parry "laptop freak" (MI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Compaq Presario R3240US Laptop (2.00 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

As the first reviewer said - it is a blazingly fast and fairly attractive laptop. It outperforms a 3.2Ghz P4 laptop with same RAM. If you run a 64bit OS like a decent Linux Distro - Gentoo or XP X64 edition (drivers for all devices in this laptop are available for X64 edition) - you get absolutely terrific performance for a laptop.

It also operates very cool - Fan comes on only when you do continuous compiles, or other similar CPU intensive work.
The 15.4' wide screen also makes it a pleasure to use.

I recommend you get XP Professional instead of Home - reason being you can upgrade to XP-Pro 64bit for free.

I didn't give it 5 star rating because of the outdated Nvidia GeForce Go440 graphics card on it. Not that it is a problem - it works good - I get decent performance while playing games, but still it's an outdated card.

Compaq doesn't seem to be selling this exact model anymore but you can go for any Mobile Athlon64 laptop they sell.