MetaChat - ComplainFilter: New laptop woes: Compaq F730us

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12 October 2007

ComplainFilter: New laptop woes: Compaq F730us Bought it, now disgusted.→[More:]So I bought this laptop (1.8Gz Athlon, 1Gb RAM, Vista Home Premium) yesterday on sale at Staples to replace my 6 year old laptop (Compaq 930Mhz Celeron, XP Home, 512Mb RAM) thinking it would have to be a lot faster, a nicer screen, etc.

Yet it turns out to be no faster at all on boot and shutdown, even straight out of the box before I install anything, and barely faster on anything else.

All those naysayers about Vista? They turn out to be right. No way should it be out of beta. It sort of runs in fits and starts, with strange lags, blinks, and lapses. And why the gratuitous reorganization? What was wrong with "Add/Remove Programs"?

The new screen is nice and bright, but the greens and blues are oddly muted. Photoshop was one of my hopes for the laptop, but I'm not sure it would work out with the odd color.

Oh, and the recovery disk set program failed half way through, so I'd have to order recovery disks from compaq.

I imagine most of the slowness is probably Vista. I could try to put XP on it. I have a spare XP license, but I'm not sure if I could find all the drivers for it.

Sorry for ranting...

Guess I'll be trying to return it tomorrow, but I'm worried about the restocking fee. I'm not exactly made of money these days.

Anyone else with experiences like this or advice for doing the return to Staples?

post by: DarkForest at: 14:57 | 16 comments

Did they tell you they would charge you? Because Staples is usually pretty adamant about not charging restocking fees. It's one of the reasons I shop there.

posted by iconomy 12 October | 15:02

Oh, that'd be nice if I didn't have to pay a restocking fee. I just sort of assumed I would. It's an hour's drive into town. I'll be heading in there tomorrow. Thanks for the encouragement.

posted by DarkForest 12 October | 15:09

Yep, it definitely helps ease the pain a little.

posted by iconomy 12 October | 15:11

You're 100% on Vista. That's why HP went back to selling machines with XP as well.
Same with Lenovo.

It's a hugeass resource hog.

posted by kellydamnit 12 October | 17:27

You need 2gb of RAM to run Vista... it's being sold with half the amount needed. Criminal, if you ask me.

You can get a 'downgrade' disc back to XP.

posted by chuckdarwin 12 October | 17:42

Microsoft's system minimum requirements are always on the low end, for any OS it has produced, Vista being no exception. The idea is that, if you want to load and run an MS OS, they're trying to tell what the absolute minimum machine you'd need for reasonable kernel/interface performance would be, with a bare minimum feature set.

So, in reality, 1 GB RAM is the practical minimum for running Vista Basic, much less Vista Home Premium. If you use the Aero interface, and much of the feature set you bought in Home Premium, you should really have at least 2 GB (or more) of RAM, and a fast hard drive, plus Aero compatible video hardware. Running Home Premium on a resource constrained laptop is bound to suck, but that's not necessarily the fault of the OS.

Turn off Aero, add a second of gig of RAM, run the thing long enough for system auto-tuning to occur, and indexes to build, and you might be having a far different experience.

posted by paulsc 12 October | 17:55

I'll have to check to see if I can add more memory without throwing away the memory it already has. I'm amazed how there isn't a document on paper, or in the computer, or even on the net as far as I can tell, about adding memory to this computer. I can find it by opening things on the back, but I like being able to read about it first if possible.

I've turned off the Aero stuff and it does seem to make things a bit smoother.

chuckdarwin: You can get a 'downgrade' disc back to XP.

I saw the post on metafilter about microsoft allowing downgrades to XP for Vista Ultimate or Business. But I assumed that doesn't include Home Premium. I'd probably need something from compaq anyway to get all the hardware drivers for XP. Though I could probably google for all my hardware and find XP drivers that way, if they all exist. I could probably call compaq tech support, but I really dread that experience. I went through weeks of that last year with my HP desktop.

posted by DarkForest 12 October | 18:45

But I assumed that doesn't include Home Premium.

I don't know.

Were there other laptops for sale with XP Pro on them? Were they a lot more money?

posted by chuckdarwin 12 October | 19:24

Were there other laptops for sale with XP Pro on them? Were they a lot more money?

I haven't seen anything here with XP for a while. But the selection in my rather rural area isn't great. I eventually found a Compaq page saying they didn't recommend downgrading to XP in most cases, even if you could find the right drivers.

Now that I've cooled off a little, I want to just try it out a bit more with photoshop, open office and visual studio to see how it really performs in comparison to my old laptop. I don't really care about the aero features, so that can stay turned off. If I can get the screen color calibrated right, I may just order a couple of GB of memory and keep it. I'll have to dump the 2 512Mb cards it has on ebay or something.

posted by DarkForest 12 October | 20:24

Good god of small apples, NEVER buy a Compaq.

You can't get the screen colour calibrated right: it's a six-bit display, just like most everyone else has.

posted by Five Fresh Fish 12 October | 23:08

Which is to say Compaq are reknown, at least in my circles, as wholly unreliable, nasty machines. Toshiba fares better and IBM/Lenovo at the top. At least AFAIK, YMMV.

posted by Five Fresh Fish 12 October | 23:57

I still can't get over the 2gb recommendation... I freaking sell computers, the vast vast majority ship out with 1. I'd say three quarters of our stock (and I work in disti, not retail, so I see everything) Shoot, even Lenovo still makes models that have 512 out of the box.

That being said, I know for sure that HP and Lenovo still have models with XP on them being made. I believe Dell and Gateway do as well, but because of their business model they don't go through normal distribution channels so my company doesn't sell them.

posted by kellydamnit 13 October | 00:32

I've been running Home Basic on a laptop with 512 megs of RAM* for a few months now. It barely passes as usable - it runs OK if there's not much hard drive activity, but when it's reading/writing heavily, everything gets bogged down. Bootup and shutdown are the worst - it takes about five minutes before I can start working. Even though the license agreement said I could downgrade to XP or 2000, I still don't want to go back to XP, as I don't like it any better.

* A low-end Samsung. My Compaq freaking died on me without warning and this was the best I could afford. I really wish I had bought a Mac instead.

posted by Daniel Charms 13 October | 01:40

Thanks for all your advice. I appreciate it.

I would never have bought a compaq except for my budget. There isn't a great selection in the bargain basement. After my troubles a year ago getting my HP desktop serviced under warranty, I swore "never HP/Compaq again". Isn't it amazing how HP could take a golden reputation and completely trash it in just a few years? But, I felt I needed to upgrade my laptop and this one seemed to have decent specs for $450. I'll admit I didn't do a lot of research before buying. I just looked around on fatwallet to see what was a good deal currently in the local stores. And my old laptop, a compaq c. 2001, has been a trooper, even surviving a thorough soaking (I mean pouring water out the vents).

It looks like I should either raise my budget on this a couple hundred, or just make do with the old laptop...

posted by DarkForest 13 October | 06:11

Update: returned to Staples, no problem.

posted by DarkForest 13 October | 13:37

Good!

posted by iconomy 13 October | 22:14

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