HP-Compaq Widescreen Presario POS

T

Trader5287

This is the 3rd Presario I've bought in the last decade and by far the worst. I use these 1K laptops for order entry and business. It travels with me constantly.

Most of the metal components have been replaced with lighter and less protective plastic. This one was available w/o Vista which is why I bought it. XP Pro crashed withing the first two weeks. The crash appeared related to the battery running down. There are no recovery discs and this one crashed before the two week auto warnings even started prompting you to make one. Yes, all HP programs recovered but none of my business or bookkeeping data did.

2007 XP Pro is FAR more cluttered with BS programs and crap business people hate than the 2004 XP Home. Word costs an extra 100$

The final straw was bumping it, quite hard I'll admit, against the car door - still though, it was w/in the realm of foreseeable accident and misuse. The screen on the super thin platic top was damaged. HP service is all India based. They want 700$ to repair a 1K computer - a price level very close to the piss off point for most people. I'm done with Compaq. This computer will be crushed under the back tire of my P/U as soon as I get a Dell or Lenovo. It lasted six weeks.
 
I have a brand new dell laptop with vista. Only problem is that once in a while the screen goes black except for a small one inch square that appears with vertical colored lines on it. Have to restart the computer to get rid of it.:mad: Not exactly great for scalping.
 
Quote from hoodooman:

I have a brand new dell laptop with vista. Only problem is that once in a while the screen goes black except for a small one inch square that appears with vertical colored lines on it. Have to restart the computer to get rid of it.:mad: Not exactly great for scalping.
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I was having a problem with Vista crashing with IB's TWS on my backup computer (My primary I reverted back to XPpro),

Dell suggested the following and it has been working for two days now...

Right click on the programs or trading software icons which you are running during system crash..
Select properties/compatibility/run in xp mode.
See if the problem persists or goes away.

Other problem I experienced with Vista was ie7 continually stopped running and needed to be restarted...

Good luck
 
Thanks for the comments guys. I also use IB.

What I'm really looking at in the Dell website is the big, clunky and shiny metallic laptops. I don't want thin and cool after my Compaq troubles and I don't care about widescreen really after all these years with 14.5", or weight.

Do your Dells seem solid?
 
Thanks HW. I will try that next time it happens. But it only happens no more than about once a week or even less, so it might take a while for me to try it. Never would have guessed about xp mode.
 
Quote from Trader5287:

Thanks for the comments guys. I also use IB.

What I'm really looking at in the Dell website is the big, clunky and shiny metallic laptops. I don't want thin and cool after my Compaq troubles and I don't care about windscreen really after all these years with 14.5", or weight.

Do your Dells seem solid?
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I have always had good experience with Dells, my current desktop replacement is the Inspiron 9400 (back up computer). Solid, dependable, suggest you get a 256mb video card, I prefer Nvidia. The external output is excellent.

Only word of caution is screen resolution.. I have the ultra sharp screens, absolutely crystal clear.... albeit font becomes very small... as I usually run external monitors (1 ea. dvi-d and 1 ea. analog) high resolution isn't really needed for the laptop screen. Another thought is that when running on batteries, the ultra sharp screens tend to be difficult/impossible to view in sunlight...

I have always found their support website very convenient, but have mixed reviews regarding phone and chat support... with my current XPS system... I am very pleased with support... 2-minutes to reach a north american based representative and they stay on the phone as long as needed... in the past tech support was marginal...

Hope it helps....
 
Quote from hoodooman:

Thanks HW. I will try that next time it happens. But it only happens no more than about once a week or even less, so it might take a while for me to try it. Never would have guessed about xp mode.
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Your quite welcome, just to be clear... select XP compatibility mode prior to running the programs, not when you experience the problem... reviewing my post, I noticed the possible confusion... :)

Blue skies all...
 
Right. Select "XP Compatibility" and reboot. If that works, the problem will not recur.

Since WinXP SP2 came out, I've had to use "Win2K" compatibility for one program... still the same today, but no more problem.
 
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