Compaq Presario CQ60-307 Laptop Review

A week ago I posted about my brand new laptop which I had recently got, now that I’ve had a couple of weeks to play around with it and test it out I thought I’d make detailed review of the product. This review is for the Presario CQ60-307, I am aware that there are different revisions of the laptop with slightly different specifications, but generally they are all similar to each other. First impressions of the laptop are really good. It is styled well and though it is larger than many laptops out there the weight is quite reasonable too. Read more for the full review.

The Specifications:

• Processor: AMD Sempron SI-42
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8200M (Shared)
• Operating System: Windows Vista Home Basic
• Standard Memory: 3 GB
• Maximum Memory Capacity: 4 GB
• Hard Drive: 160 GB (Also features a built in recovery partition)
• Storage controller: SATA
• Screen Size 15.6″ Single channel LVDS HD BrightView
• Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768
• Speciall Features: Build in Webcam

And lets not forget the price, I’ve seen it vary on different websites but generally you should be looking at between £349 – £369

There the main specifications a more detailed list can be found below:
Compaq Presario CQ60-307EA/SA Notebook PC – Specifications

Pictures:

The review:

After unboxing the laptop and having a look at it for the first time, I was generally impressed with it. It is styled well, very sleek looking very nice colour, though black generally loves your finger print marks, the weight of it is a little bit heavier than the average laptop but still it is a little bit wider and has a 15.6″ HD BrightView screen so the little extra weight is for a good reason. Touchpad is a good size and is very responsive to moments, similarly the keyboard is also a nice size the keys themselves are generally larger than most laptops, but the layout works well, features it’s own number keypad too.

Setup of the laptop was quick and easy, it’s nice to see Compaq welcome you to your laptop with there setup screen. In minitues I was connected to my wireless connection and on the internet. Though Windows Update did it’s thing for the next 40 mins, and unluckily for me it decided to download and install Windows Vista Service Pack 2, but once all of the updates we’re loaded I was able to use my laptop. On a unrelated note here I’d recommend if you do have a wireless network, grab a spare ethernet cable and connect the laptop directly to your router for the downloading of updates, I wasn’t able to at the time so this kept me from using my laptop instantly as dowloading the updates took a bit longer over wireless, but it wasn’t that much of a issue.

First impressions out of the way, now lets get down to performance. So far Im very impressed with the performance of the laptop. The AMD Sempron processor seems to work quite well within the notebook, though I am a AMD fan and user I was bit skeptical of the use of AMD processors in notebooks, but so far im eating my own words. Unlike other laptops out there Windows Vista does actually work well on this laptop and I don’t care if you hate vista. It is obvious that it has been setup for Windows Vista rather than some crappy hardware parts thrown together job not saying any names *cough* eMachines. I noticed other laptops with a similar pricing that had Windows Vista pre-loaded but only had like 1 GB of ram, sadly this is a small proportion of people that joined the “Vista Sucks” club when it was actually the hardware inside that was not up to the operating system itself therefore people experienced crappy performance and even the blue screen of death. I’ve always had a personal rule of mine where by you look at the minimum specs for a operating system and take note of specifics like RAM. For example Windows Vista Home Basic minimum RAM required is 512 MB, I would double this number at least, maybe even go further so your performance is uncomprimised. But this is certainly not the case with the Presario CQ60. It comes with a healthy 3 GB of Ram which is plenty for Windows Vista to play with.

Screen quality is brilliant and taking advantage of the slightly bigger 15.6″ screen size with a more of a random 1366 x 768 screen resolution dimension, but as it’s been proven the bigger your screen the better your productivity can be, so if your a bit of developer and often find yourself working on stuff, the Presario CQ60-307 will be brilliant for you, and im happy to say that this laptop can multi task quite well, I’ve had Norton Internet Security (Which as you know can be a memory hog) running in the background while on the internet running a couple of tabs and some web-dev apps. And performance wasn’t comprimised at all. Talking of screen quality the speaker aren’t that bad either and the sound quality is good, so if you are fan of watching movies on your laptop you won’t be disappointed.

One major shock to me was the trail software that I thought the laptop was going to be littered with was going to be useless, but suprisingly most of it is useful, trial software includes, Microsoft Office 2007, Norton Internet Security both valid trails for 60 Days and others like the CyberLink software that is present and are attached to functions like the Webcam and DVD suite. So props to HP for making the trail stuff decent!

But with the good comes the bad and while the Presario has alot of good points there are also a few bad. The battery life mainly being one, it’s not that great, a maximum of 2 hours which isn’t bad, but it’s not the best. You could probably take advatange of Windows Vista’s power management and tweak your battery profiles to your current actions to save power and battery life, say if you just clicking about on the internet, you could afford to go into power saver mode, which will lower power consumption, but at the expense of performance, but if you just clicking about you won’t get any major performance problems.

Another interesting and slightly personal problem I like to say is if you own a better version than Windows Vista Home Basic you may have problems trying to choose the upgrade option if you pop in your Windows Vista disc. I tried to upgrade the laptop to Windows Vista Ultimate but I wasn’t able to choose the upgrade option and all it said was “Please install a later version of your operating system” or something like that. I found out this problem is because of the customized boot loader that the laptop carries due to the built in recovery partition on the hard drive, which can not be upgraded unless the recovery partition is removed, which im in no hurry to do. This problem is for upgrade installations and not for the full installation, though doing a full installation may screw up your recovery partition as it will mess with the boot loader.

A bit of a bad point for the laptop gamers out there, the Presario CQ60-307 does feature a shared graphics card, while the specs for the nVidia GeForce 8200M G are respectable with a total memory of 1394 MB, you might want to look at alternatives with a dedicated graphics card if you want the best gaming experience. Though this doesn’t mean it’s entirely useless for games. Alot of games will run well, just generally a dedicated graphics card is required for being able to play a game that demands high performance hardware so you are able to play game on the highest settings.

Finally you might want to look at your start up programs list and see what programs are being loaded. I found that there were alot of programs (Generally HP software) was being loaded on start up when it wasn’t needed. Generally this is a problem with buying your laptop from a vendor, but if you click on your start button and search for msconfig you are able to uncheck programs which are loaded on start up. I removed a handful of stuff I won’t use and it’s helped the start up time, though it wasn’t too shabby in the first place. There are quite alot of HP related software loaded on, but most are actually quite useful one being the HP Advisor, others not so much. It’s up to you really.

Pro’s:

• Good value for money price between £349 – £369 depending on where you buy it from
• Brilliant notebook for doing all of your day to day tasks
• Good Screen Quality
• Speakers are a good quality also
• Built in Recovery Partition
• Good Performance and runs smooth when running multiple programs

Con’s:

• Battery life could be better
• Shared Graphics card, so if you a gamer might want to look at others with a decicated graphics memory

Is is it worth buying?

I would say overall yes, it is a good buy, it’s a decent price and Hewlett Packard (Compaq is owned by HP) are a good brand. The Compaq Presario range is inexpensive and is good value for money, with the Compaq Presario CQ60-307 you will be able to do any day to day tasks, run multiple programs at the same time with no problems of slow performance or high loads and with it’s 3 GB of memory, you can say good bye to the slow lane. Well worth considering the Compaq Presario CQ60-307 if you looking for a new laptop for the home.