November 1st, 2009
Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Laptop computers
The Compaq brand, which HP has relegated to the budget bin, doesn’t get a whole lot of attention (or reviews) anymore. But that’s your gain because HP has quietly been delivering very good values under the Compaq label. At certain times over the past year, Wal-Mart and other stores were briefly selling Compaq laptops for just under $300. The Compaq CQ61z is a new Windows 7 model with a 15.6-inch (1366×768) display. It starts at $399.99 (basically in netbook territory) with a 2.00GHz AMD Sempron M100 processor, 2GB of memory, ATI Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphics, a 160GB hard drive, LightScribe DVD burner and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. One of my picks in last year’s holiday guide, the Dell Inspiron 15 is also a good deal at $399.99 but it has Intel integrated graphics, which do not offer the same level of performance (2.20GHz Intel Celeron 900, 2GB of memory, 160GB hard drive and DVD burner). Currently Best Buy’s least expensive 15.6-inch laptop is a Toshiba Satellite L500 series model that starts at $449.99. Like any low-priced laptop, the Compaq CQ61z has its trade-offs. The design is a bit bland, the performance won’t set any new records and the battery life will be relatively poor. But it you’re on a tight budget, the Compaq CQ61z offers a lot more than similarly-priced netbooks, and is a better choice for many users such as students.
John Morris is a former executive editor at CNET Networks and senior editor at PC Magazine. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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