Has Anyone Bought a Compaq Laptop?

[heyYOU]

And if so, have you had any problems with your Compaq laptop? And were the problems solved easily with Compaq Tech Support? I just came across this website www.compaqsucks.com and some of the stories are really scaring me off from buying a compaq presario laptop 1216US laptop. Thanks for taking the time to reply, I'm really hoping I get some positive responses, the laptop is great for the price.

 

[Bglad]

I just finished grad school where every student was required to have a laptop. So I've gotten familiar with almost every brand out there. After several years, the Compaq's became a joke among the students and staff. They were by far the slowest and least reliable. Second worst was Sony. They also had a high incidence of physical parts such as pcmcia slots breaking. Tech support for people having problems was also very poor. They would have to take it to Comp USA or wherever they bought it for service, get it back unrepaired three times before finally having it sent to Compaq through the retailer. Really bad.

Plus, see my post here about their setup:
Old compaq post

[edit]
By the way, favorites were probably 1 IBM, 2 Dell and 3 Gateway or Toshiba.

 

[dbwillis]

We use alot of Compaq M700 laptops here at work, they are always breaking, locking up or just blue screening, very unreliable.
We use gateway 9550 laptops also, they are much better but also have there problems as well

 

[jschuk]

Not much experience with the Presario laptops other than their OS support sucks to be blunt. Don't expect much for updates, BIOS or OS.

 

[amb#cog]

I know one thing. I've seen someone rave, including myself, about how happy I am w/ a new computer item (any type really, including a whole one ) for just about everything. I've never seen someone just freak out about a Compaq, except Paulson, but that was cause a gig was rare then. Only heard negative things about them, you know like at work you usually just hear the bad stuff.

 

[OZEE]

I'll never have a Compaq anything again.

I'm using a Compaq Presario 1200 right not. Floppy died the day after the warranty was up. Hard drive is starting to show end-of-life symptoms.

I work in industrial control programming, so alot of my experiences are kinda outside of normal computer use (dust, heat,cold, vibration, etc.). Other experiences with Compaq desktops has shown that they use special hardware. A dead floppy drive couldn't be replaced with a standard $25 floppy... no, it required a special $300 Compaq floppy. And I've seen both hardware and software installation instructions that had regular installation instructions then a separate section of Compaq installation instructions. And the only time I have ever seen a real, honest-to-goodness, software/hardware incompatibility issue that couldn't be otherwise worked out was related to a proprietary Compaq BIOS.

 

[wedi42]

there are better laptops out there
ibm and dell are the best

we could rant about compaqs all day, just go get the best

 

[RU482]

We have a variety of compaq laptops at work. I seriously do NOT know why they keep buying them. They are sub-par, IMHO. Granted, the only other laptop I've ever used was an IBM, and it gave just as much trouble. I just can't imagine, for the price you pay, that they (laptops in general) would suck as much as they do.