Compaq Presario 5102US Desktop (1-GHz Athlon, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive)

Rating:
Summary: Good Machine
Review: Honestly, a very good machine. Besides starting out with a great amount of options, (DVD, CDRW, 256MG ram), the chip is overclockable to 1.5GHTZ easily. Plus, the chip can be upgraded to PIII. A very good machine for the price. If you're looking for a lowend machine with midrange possibilities, pick it up!

Rating:
Summary: Good Machine
Review: Honestly, a very good machine. Besides starting out with a great amount of options, (DVD, CDRW, 256MG ram), the chip is overclockable to 1.5GHTZ easily. Plus, the chip can be upgraded to PIII. A very good machine for the price. If you're looking for a lowend machine with midrange possibilities, pick it up!

Rating:
Summary: Good Computer bad buy
Review: I bought this computer in January of 2002. I have had so many problems with it. Every time I would call up compaq I would wait 2-6 hours just to talk to a support specialist then they would transfer me and again i would wait an additional 1-6 hours. I don't have the patience to wait and if you don't have 10 hours a month to wait on hold with compaq don't buy a compaq.

Rating:
Summary: 5320us
Review: i had problems with unit freezing up when i tried to use a game cds. video and audio cards are not much to start with and are integrated into motherboard, so upgrading is either very difficult or not possible from what i have been told. ask specific questions and demand accurate answers about what this and any computer will and can do in the future. live and learn. j

Rating:
Summary: Good Starter Computer
Review: I just bought this one week ago. It is a great starter computer. All I really use it for is internet, word processing, and finances. I was impressed how quickly this computer started up and came to the Windows screen. Though I would prefer an Intel Pentium 4 1.4GHz or higher, the AMD processor is alright for my needs. The video card is sharing 8MB memory, so I do plan to upgrade the memory from 128MB to 512MB (memory is very inexpensive right now) and maybe even add a more powerful sound card since I like to listen to music a lot and the one that is included is integrated to the motherboard. Overall, its good, and if you have more needs than what I mentioned above, then consider another model that is one or two notches above this one. For [more money], you can get one with DVD and more.

Rating:
Summary: Compaq the Weapon of Choice
Review: I own a lesser of the line of Compaq (I have a 950 mhz). I have tried Windows XP though. I find that Compaq is a very high quality product. It is up with Dell, above Hewlett Packard. I highly suggest that you do no purchase a Hewlett Packard because of many reasons (see my review on it). I like the audio, keyboard, and all the small things about a Compaq. CD-RW write drives are a must for the future. Windows XP is wonderful for multiple users. It has a sign in screen. You can personalize your sign in with things such as your own wallpaper, sounds, pointing arrow, etc. I also prefer Windows above Apple. Apple is only good if you are looking for the most simplicity.

Rating:
Summary: a good buy
Review: i recently just purchased one of these computers and i must say its doing its job. Loading big programs like corel draw with ease. Evening running muiltiple programs with hardly any lag time. The cd burner its very speedy and very simple to use. As a new college student this will become a treasured item for the fact that its so fast. I recommend it to all who want a nice affordable computer that'll get whatever you need done.

Rating:
Summary: Good value!
Review: I've bought 3 Compaq Presarios in the past few years. Their machines, in general, offer great value for the money. However, they are not terribly well-built or well-designed. It can be a frustrating task to add hard drive or CD drive to the system yourself. On some models, I practically had to dismantle all the drive bays before I can fit a new drive in. This can be a blessing though: my house was burglarized once and the computer literate burglar decided to steal all the add-on cards in my Compaq instead of taking the whole machine which was too heavy. He got the cards all right, but couldn't figure out how to remove the hard drives and left my 2 drives with valuable data behind. I should be grateful to the Compaq hardware designers. :-)

Rating:
Summary: seen this before?
Review: Isn't funny how after a while these reviews all seem to be the same? If you notice the reviews for the other computer system's, you will see they are the same. The details were changed, but they seem to be a form letter...!!

Rating:
Summary: Not too shabby, but.....
Review: it still suffers from some typical Compaq flaws. This is a handy all around household unit with some gaming features that make it more playable than the 5400. Certainly, the price isn't bad either. However, it does not include a monitor, which you'll need to buy separately. The machine's limitations for gamers lie in its limited, mothboard-bound graphics capabilities (a result of the low power NVidia card) and its mediocre ESS sound. There is an aqequate sized hard drive and a pretty good 12X CD burner, so MP3 collectors will not suffer too much. Anyway, like I said, it's a good, basic machine and if that's your interest, you'll be happy with the unit. I should point out that expanding these Compaqs (a lot like their HP bretheren) is a daunting task; things are tight in the case and adding cards and drives is a challenge, so you better like the machine the way you get it, and not the way you envision it upgraded. Lastly, Compaq's reliability has been acceptable, though its service has been less so.