Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Craig Duncan <craigduncan AT entuend.com>]

Colleen McCarthy wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I'm going to get the Presario at Office Depot (I do have concerns about
> durability, however, and wish I could justify a Latitude...), and just have
> one final decision to make: Do I want a DVD burner?  I don't know.  I don't
> have one on my desktop, but would I use one?  Do many of you have one and
> use it?
>
> In case anyone else is interested in the deal that Office Depot has (today
> is the last day), here's the breakdown of what you get for $400 and the cost
> of the upgrades that I'm getting:
>
> Base PC: Compaq Presario R3000Z with an AMD Athlon XP-M Processor 2400+ for
> $399 (after rebates).
> Memory: 256 MB DOR
> Hard Drive: 40 GB
> CD/DVD:  8X DVD-ROM drive
> Screen: 15"  XGA screen,
> Graphics Card: 32 MB Nvidia GeForce 4 420 Go
>
> Upgrades and Shipping:
> Shipping $45
> Wireless $30
> Upgrade to CD/DVD burner $100, dual side DVD burner $120
> Upgraded Graphics card to 64 MB $25
>
> Thanks!
>
> Colleen
>
> Colleen McCarthy, BSMT, BSEE, MBA, PMP
> (h) 460-0641
>
>  
Since everyone else is continuing this thread even though Collen has 
made a decision, I might as well toss in my two fairly relevant cents - 
HP & Compaq are more or less one company.

I purchased  an HP ze4800 laptop last  year, and although it was not my 
first choice I did get it for ~$250 of my own money (plus some gift 
certificates to best buy I cashed in for credit card miles.) With one or 
two minor exceptions, I have been pretty happy. It's fairly light, the 
keyboard is super comfortable, and Gentoo Linux just hums like crooner 
on  a stage in his prime. I can even use the built-in 54g wireless 
thanks to the ndis warpper folks.

But ..., the keyboard started generating random characters, so <ctrl-c> 
would not cut text from my document, instead it change the virtual 
screen I was on. The tilde (~) character would generate something like 
~^++, so changing to my home directory became a serious pain, the delete 
key also change the insert mode, ...

I called support (open 24/7) and found someone *not* from Bangalore 
(+1). They were skeptical about me using Linux, but not dismissive and 
were most helpful in identifying an issue worthy of repair. They sent 
out fedEx the next day and I had my laptop back with a new keyboard 4 
days later. Pretty cool I thought. That was until I tried tying again, 
and same old thing, argh! Called back, they sent fedEx again and this 
time replace the mobo. This time it took six days but this time 
everything was back to normal.

A little frustrating to be without your primary computer for two weeks, 
but the service was friendly, helpful and in my many years of dealing 
with tech support experience, pretty darned good.

I could use a memory upgrade from 512M to 1G for development work, and 
the 1024x768 is fine for most purposes, but all in all I am a fairly 
satisfied customer. If Colleen's worst experience with her Compaq is 
similar to my own, then I think she will also be fairly pleased. Of 
course, XP Home edition has got to go, no if's not but's, no maybe's, 
just wipe that bad boy and use something worthwhile.

Good luck Colleen,

Craig Duncan