Customer Reviews

Compaq Presario CQ50-210US 15.4-Inch Laptop (2.0 GHz AMD Athlon X2 QL-62 Dual-Core Processor, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

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

 

 

This Laptop is great for the price so far no complaints. Its great for business use. The Compaq Presario CQ50-210US looks similar to the HP 6000 series but without all the flashy aesthetics, which I prefer. Put in a finger print reader and it would be good to go.

About six months ago i needed to purchase a laptop for urgent schooling reasons. At the time I knew nearly nothing about computers (buying or using)Some how i fell upon this Compaq presario and the price wasn't too unreasonable at $600 so i went for it.

The first bump in the road occured after the first month when i realized after about 25 "practice uses" for windows vista i was unable to use it anymore. In my haste i didn't bother entering my product key (located under the notebook) to make Vista official.

I also use my compaq stationary on my desk and kept it plugged in, so i never really realized the heat this thing gives off, and it DOES get HOT. So after some reading into it i bought a laptop cooler to prevent damage from overheating and whatnot. the fan can get rather loud as well(presumably from working so hard trying to keep it cool).

I had no problems connecting, and the few times it did have trouble, i shut it down, reset my wireless router and it was back up, so not the computers fault. I did notice that every so often Internet explorer will stop working(Not Responding) in the middle of use, resulting in opening task manager and closing the window. This doesn't happen an overwhelming amount, but enough to take notice.

Lastly(just a personal thing)the outside tends to get VERY smudgy. It's very slick looking when its clean, but easily leaves fingerprints.

Not a BAD computer, could be cooler, literally, and quieter, and my review probably could've been improved if i had been more knowledgable about the purchasing and the components of a good computer in the first place :P

I really like this laptop. Performance wise it is really good - much better than I expected. The HP install of additional software is minorly intrusive, but it's easy to disable or uninstall the stuff that I didn't want. I use it as a general purpose laptop for accessing the internet, reading email, and watching videos. It fits my needs well. I've been able to successfully install Ubuntu Linux on the device, with the assistance of this link: [...]. All features work correctly.

I paid $[...] for it (after $[...] in [...]). So from a price/performance perspective, that's one kind of hot.

But then there's another kind of hot. The devices generates extremely high temperatures. So high that I am concerned that the device will fry itself.

I use speedfan to monitor temperatures. The GPU seems to be parked at 110C, the CPU is typically above 60C sometimes going into the 70's and 80's, and the HD is usually around 55C sometimes spiking above 60C. The GPU and HD temp seem excessive to me: especially the HD. I just purchased a laptop cooler to deal with this (not yet arrived).

I occasionally need to leave the device running overnight (e.g. in order to complete a backup). In order to do this, I have to close the screen, and lean it against a wall so that the bottom side is exposed to open air. If I do that, the temps for GPU, CPU & HD fall back into much more reasonable ranges (GPU<100C, CPU<60C & HD<50C).

I am hoping that the laptop cooler that I bought will significantly help with the cooling of this device. However, without the cooler, I am concerned that I will fry the device very quickly. So, for now, I'm not leaving it run for long periods of time. This, of course, limits it's usefulness. I would have given this a 5-star review except for this heat problem. Which is bad enough to drop the review down to 3-star.

Summary:

Pros:

* Performance

* Price (my price)

* HP Windows install is good & non-intrusive

* Linux compatible

Cons:

* Hot (by far my biggest concern)

* Battery life is low - I get about 90 minutes

* The case is a fingerprint magnet

UPDATE: Wow, what a difference a working fan makes. I connected with HP via their online chat about the heating problem. They sent me a box and a shipping label for repair. I dropped it off at FedEx on Monday and had it back on Friday. They replaced the fan. And now, the normal usage temps are: GPU 104C, CPU 58C, HD 49C. These are all *much* more reasonable.

As a consequence, I have changed my review to 5 stars. Note however, that I got a great price for this. Much less than the price advertised on amazon when this review was written. I would rate this much lower at that price.

UPDATE2: HP removed the screws from the hard drive in order to replace the fan. But they didn't put them back in, causing the drive to unseat itself and disconnect. At least one screw is needed to keep that harddrive from easily falling out of it's connector. Bad form, HP! When I called them back, I had to haggle with them to send me some screws. They wanted me to send the entire laptop back in.

I purchased this laptop 18 months ago and for the price, seemed like a great buy. I am now learning why it is well priced.

I receved it with a few pixels burned out. I was not concerned. To me it wasn't worth packing up and shipping back. A few months later the computer kept shutting down. Here the motherboard was running so hot, it shut itself down so the motherboard would not fry. Upon inspecting the machine, the fan vent is on the bottom. A not-so-bright design if I may say so. My fix is to use it on a cookie cooling rack. So now, wherever my 'portable' laptop goes, the cookie rack follows.

A few months after that, the cursor would jump around whenever I typed with my palms resing next to the mouse pad. Talk about annoying. Then most recently it will not pick up my AC adapter charger being plugged in. It died last night, while plugged in, and I cannot get it back on. I'm calling support tonight to see what my options are.

So to summarize my wonderful experience thus far with this product:

- Burnt out pixels

- Overheating motherboard due to poor hardware design (fan vent on bottom)

- Cursor jumping around when typing

- Power supply issues

Yeah, great buy. :)

This laptop lasted exactly 50 days. It ran hot, constantly kicked on a very noisy fan, made grinding noises, had internet connection problems, and was very slow. It died on the 50th day. I ran a hard drive test and found that it had failed. It will be mailed back to Compaq and they will replace the hard drive. The technician on the phone said that he has fielded many calls regarding its wireless difficulties. Sadly, I will lose money by having to redo my professional installation. Monika

I paid close to $375 for this laptop over 2 yrs ago. I have experienced very little trouble out of it;even after I accidentally leave it in the car during the winter. The fan does get fairly hot at times and the touchpad acts strange occasionally. It is a great product for the money i paid for a brand new laptop. I agree that is a great value.

I have been using this computer for 6 to 12 hours a day for 17 months. When I received it it had a bad RAM chip, which took a month and a half to get replaced. Then they sent a stick of desktop ram (which HP let me keep). That is the end of my complaints. This has been a stellar machine, I use it heavily, including some gaming. This is no gaming laptop, but I have run Half Life 2 on higher settings with no problems. It runs hot, most laptops do.

All in all, a very good laptop, and at these prices, a great laptop (though I wouldn't put it on my lap for long).

I purchased two Compaq laptops for Christmas 2008. Four months into using my laptop, the screen spontaneously cracked. I hardly took it anywhere and when I did I used a heavy duty carry case. HP/Compaq took it into consideration for repair, at my expense. $429 to replace the screen, I opted out. The second pc has a glitch where the screen has to be repositioned every 30 minutes or so when it goes all white.

After fighting HP on the first pc I have no will to do so on the second. They don't live up to the "Built to Last" sticker on the keyboard. HP does not live up to their warranty. My 16 family members have agreed to never by HP/Compaq products ever again.

un negocio excelente, muy rapida, muy estable, gran capacidad, yo la compre para trabajar y funciona perfecto, solo agregue 2 gb mas de RAM, para tenerla completa...la recomiendo...

I have beeen fixing one thses laptops for my cosin pretty much non stop. I was interested to see a HP/Compaq hybrid after reading Compaq had been bought out by HP but I was expecting a much better notebook. This note-book has horrible performance just like the old Compaq presario I used to have. Had the same screen issues that my old Compaq had and also possesses the same horrible crashing that my old compaq had. SO I guess HP just took the failed design of the old Compaq systems and re-shipped them. This is proabally why just before they were bought by HP, Compaq had the lowest ratings and test scores of any brand it all catagories. Not all Compaq's are bad, my releationship with the Compaq systems is they work or they don't, which I was no where near satisfied with.