Attn: Fellow Laptop sufferers

[honzie]

Just grabbed a Presario laptop for $450 from BestBuy, a national chain store, cannot believe the specs for the money. 80 Gb hd, 1gb ram, great display (maybe better than my desktop monitor) 15.2" which makes for better keyboard IMO.

I know I've seen alot of laptop gripes recently and feel like this info may help someone. Consider if you are getting ready to invest in repairs etc. Cannot believe how prices came down -- not to long ago a notebook with these specs is way over $1000

 

[Uno]

gooo, compaq? what processor did you get? also are you running vista? if so get an upgrade on RAM now...

 

[honzie]

• Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core mobile processor T2080, 1GB DDR2 memory, 80GB hard drive and high-speed wireless LAN
• Windows Vista Home Premium, double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW drive, 15.4" BrightView widescreen and Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Compact wireless mouse with 1000 dpi optical sensor; handy power features like automatic sleep state, low battery indicator and convertible battery or USB-powered operation

Yes - I recall seeing 2Gb ram for vista at differnet forums but figured I'd give it a try as is and if necessary add mem., don't plan on doing any gaming, dvd burning, (Viewing maybe) or deep multitasking just basic stuff plus a little web browsing. Not really a compaq fan but this was as good a deal as I saw online or anywhere so grabbed and took it home.

 

[Uno]

great buy man...

 

[honzie]

So far so good Doc. Not breaking any speed records but not slow either although I haven't put it through a real test yet. We'll see what happens once I try to get some older apps on, have a feeling I won't be loving it (or Vista) as much as I do right now - lol. I AM NOT BUYING ANOTHER VERSION OF MS OFFICE DAMMIT! 3 is enough! I'll use wordpad and the like on laptop and transx over to xp machine if necessary. Wide keypad is nice, others I've used I kept mistyping due to narrow keyboard.

 

[TwoCard]

Can you change from VISTA to XP ?

 

[honzie]

Good question. Me and sales-dude were discussingthis upon purchase. I have a Dell xp restore cd, he seems to think that I could use this to install xp onto laptop which is Compaq. I am not convinced that it will go off without hitch, even though I trust cab files, which is key, on that Dell cd. In the end I may end up keeping Vista on lap and xp on desktop. Can find ways to manipulate files or transfer back and forth etc. Still I'd like to try it for testing purpose.

 

[Data]

I have a Dell xp restore cd, he seems to think that I could use this to install xp onto laptop which is Compaq.

I highly doubt this is going to work. The CD from Dell is not a regular Windows XP CD and is crippled in a way to run on Dell's machines only.

 

[TwoCard]

I highly doubt this is going to work. The CD from Dell is not a regular Windows XP CD and is crippled in a way to run on Dell's machines only.

I have a Microsoft XP Professional installation disk.

Will this work on any computer ?

 

[Data]

I have a Microsoft XP Professional installation disk.

Will this work on any computer ?

Yes, it will if it is installation CD and not a reinstallation CD. Remember, once installed, you will have a grace period of 30 days to activate Windows XP using a valid product key.

 

[barman]

No need to ever buy another version of MS Office.

Just go to openoffice.com and hook up on the open source versions.

They are clones of MS Office products and are set up to also save files in MS Office formats so they can be viewed by other computers if you forward a file.

 

[honzie]

I highly doubt this is going to work. The CD from Dell is not a regular Windows XP CD and is crippled in a way to run on Dell's machines only.

Yes Data - this was my first thought, the industry makes nothing easy for user and leverages matters like this into profit for them. Repeat, will prob let it remain vista and actually get used to it ++++ mmmooaannn

Barman, have dabbled with some OpenOffice stuff in past, will probably install eventually regardless of what I end up with as far as MS OFfice. Can't hurt, have space on hd.

 

[hellah10]

if your gonna go from vista to xp, make sure you have drivers for xp. i have seen issues where people wanna reload with XP, even with a legit disk, and no drivers seem to work. even those sites like drivershq.com dont have drivers for some machines that came with vista

 

[honzie]

Hellah, if I do go this route I will format hd and see what I can accomplish with xp. If all goes well will bring vista back on other partition. Worst case will go back to vista as is right now with restore dvd and go without xp. No important files on my laptop at this point so won't be disaster. Reading some of these vista forums makes one hesitate to attempt any changes at all - scary stories out there.

 

[hellah10]

why dont you head out to compaqs site and see if drivers are available to download - if there are, then i would say its worth your time... otherwise, i wouldnt bother

keep us posted on what happens tho, id like to see how this unravels

 

[honzie]

Will sleep on it. May attempt to find old bud who may have a compaq lap xp image. If I get serious may go this route.