Rating: 
Summary: Best Laptop on the market
Review: 18 months after purchase, my laptop is still one of the best available. There are newer laptops with faster proscessors. But that is the only quality they have that is better than mine. Mine smokes through stuff. With 512 mb ram, and the 16 mb video, this machine is awesome. As a laptop repairperson, I would have to say that the ease of assembly and repair is also pretty high. The dual optical bays are the bomb for a laptop, and the ability to use a second battery in the futurebay is also amazing. You can easily watch a whole movie on the go. I have 2 batterys plus a futurebay, and I can do a whole days work on just battery power. All that said, there are some imprefections.
First: the futurebay battery drains before the regular battery. It should be the opposite, or at least user definable(it may be, but I havnt looked hard for where that would be.
Second: other removable drive systems allow for a secondary hard drive, and so far as I can tell this one does not. that should change.
Third: USB ports mounted vertically on the back is a bad idea.
Fourth and last: the rubber feet come off way easy, and the flip down "legs" are an extraordinarily bad idea. All in all, the bottom of the case takes way to much wear because of this. Its superficial, but still annoying.
Rating: 
Summary: Windows XP shut down
Review: Compaq 2701 does not work at the moment, because of some problems with Windows XP. It never happened neither to my previous Compaq Presario 1694 nor to the desktops I used. In addition, no restore cd, nor an application/drivers cd were included, so I can not do anything myself with this problem.
Rating:
Summary: Ultra Cool Laptop!
Review: Contrary to one of the previous reviews, this laptop DOES come with both an image restore cd AND an application/drivers cd as well. I'm using it as I type this review! I have also replaced the XP Home edition with XP Pro. No problems with the Home Edition of XP but I need Pro for business purposes. THIS IS A GREAT LAPTOP! I used to own an IBM Thinkpad which I adored because of it's reliability and sleek performance. (May it rest it peace...) The Presario 2701 smokes it speed wise and has proven to be very reliable in the field. The PIII Chip performs expectedly fast and the 512 MB of RAM gives it plenty of room to work with. The Toshiba CD-R has buffer underrun protection which came as a wonderful surprise. No more burning CD Coasters! Most laptops I checked out didn't have this benefit. The dual-optical bays allow for a DVD-ROM drive so I never have to switch CDs! I get looks of amazement when people see CD trays pop from both sides of the laptop. The big screen is a godsend and is crystal clear at 1400x1050, especially when using XP's Cleartype technology. The Radeon Mobility card is great with 3-D applications and games. Its run every 3-d application and game I've thrown at it. (i.e. Bryce, Max Payne, etc...) Lastly, the speakers are the best I've ever heard. [...] The richness and full bass that emitted from the JBL speakers blew away the rest. I really think this laptop is a terrific powerhouse of functions and should provide more than enough for both the Power User and computer enthusiast.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't Run 3D Games. DVD Stutters!!!
Review: Everything about this laptop probably works great as it was intended to (e.g., MS Office, web browsing). However, I had a problem with DVD playback--the playback was stuttering. After researching on the web, I disabled the ACPI--the video card and sound card were sharing the same ICQs, and it worked fine. And then when I play Wolfenstein, the game would hard freeze (I have to hard reboot to regain control of the laptop) randomly every 5 - 20 minutes into the game. The same thing happens with Everquest (Luclin) as well. But, at least I get the play the game a little bit longer--20 - 45 minutes in the game it would freeze the same way. I have tried everything. The game was barely playable before I disable the ACPI. But, by disabling it, it will play for a while and crashes. I tried putting Win2k on it--hoping that it was some driver issue I was facing, but suffer the same fate. May be I have a defective machine or something. I don't know if I should bother contact the COMPAQ Technical support.
Rating: 
Summary: Best value. RedHat easy to install.
Review: Excellent screen and incredible speakers. Performance is ok. A bit heavy but is worth it. Lots of nice features. Better looking than Dell or Acer, but not as nice as Vaios. Mouse pad sometimes behaves erratically. Great price! Installing RedHat 7.2 as a dual boot system (shared with XP) is a piece of cake.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful and solid notebook
Review: I bought a Compaq 2700 series computer about a month go, and I've been extremely pleased with it. It is a real powerhouse rivaling my desktop XP1800+ system. The screen, keyboard and sound are excellent. The system has excellent build quality. During the last month, I've been running the system hard night and day. I've run some programs that had the CPU running 100% for 8 hours at a stretch. It has been absolutely solid. I've never had a hang or crash -- it's performance is flawless. I highly recommend this system to anyone looking for a powerful system and willing to carry an 8-pound notebook.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT FEATURES MAKE THIS TOP OF THE LINE
Review: I bought this laptop about 10 months ago because I required a computer, but being on the move, also needed portability. The 2701US was the absolute best then, and 10 months later, not much has changed. Many newer laptops have faster processors, going as high as 2GHz, however not many of them have 512 MB RAM. It also used SDRAM, so you are getting high speed RAM as well. The 15.1" active-matrix display provides crystal clear display, with a wider viewing angle than most I've seen. The feature that impressed me the most was the dual CD drives. Most laptops with CD-RW and DVD drives have either a combo drive, or you have the swap the CD-RW and DVD drives in and out of the same bay. This laptop actually has 2 separate drives, a DVD-ROM on the left side, and a CD-RW on the right side. The CD-RW bay also doubles up as a hot-swappable 3.5" floppy drive. The dual drives make for great convenience when trying to copy a CD. The DVD player is also a great feature. There is nothing better than sitting on a long flight watching a DVD movie on your laptop. It also passed a way a lot of waiting time in airports. The only problem with traveling with the laptop is that the dual drives make for a laptop a little heavier than most. If you can get past this single inconvienence, you will see that the features it has makes it worth the extra weight. If you are looking for a gaming machine, this is not for you. I am an avid video game player, and although this machine exceeded my expectations as far as compatibility goes, an 8MB video card can only get you so far. Although this was able to smoothly handle most games that required a video card double that size, a lot of newer games require 32MB and beyond, and this absolutely cannot handle that. It was able to handle a game as powerful as Ghost Recon and NHL 2002, however for some reason it was unable to handle games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and The Game of Life. For normal application use, such as office programs, the internet, DVD movies, and even photo editing software, this ran perfectly. I also use Macromedia Flash to make movies, and this had no problem handling that. The battery life was outstanding on this computer, and it even came with a back-up that fits in the CD-RW bay. Overall, the computer was pretty reliable. The only crashes I had were when I tried to do things on it that a laptop has no business doing. The boot up time was average speed for a laptop. Now that I have settled down, I have sold my 2701US and bought a destop that is twice as powerful for 3/4 the price, but is not becuase I was dissatisfied with my 2701US. It just that laptops are made for a specific purpose, and if you try to pretend this is a desktop and use it accordingly, you will be bitterly disappointed. If you want a great Laptop computer, look no further. The 2701US is a great buy.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT FEATURES MAKE THIS TOP OF THE LINE
Review: I bought this laptop about 10 months ago because I required a computer, but being on the move, also needed portability. The 2701US was the absolute best then, and 10 months later, not much has changed. Many newer laptops have faster processors, going as high as 2GHz, however not many of them have 512 MB RAM. It also used SDRAM, so you are getting high speed RAM as well. The 15.1" active-matrix display provides crystal clear display, with a wider viewing angle than most I've seen. The feature that impressed me the most was the dual CD drives. Most laptops with CD-RW and DVD drives have either a combo drive, or you have the swap the CD-RW and DVD drives in and out of the same bay. This laptop actually has 2 separate drives, a DVD-ROM on the left side, and a CD-RW on the right side. The CD-RW bay also doubles up as a hot-swappable 3.5" floppy drive. The dual drives make for great convenience when trying to copy a CD. The DVD player is also a great feature. There is nothing better than sitting on a long flight watching a DVD movie on your laptop. It also passed a way a lot of waiting time in airports. The only problem with traveling with the laptop is that the dual drives make for a laptop a little heavier than most. If you can get past this single inconvienence, you will see that the features it has makes it worth the extra weight. If you are looking for a gaming machine, this is not for you. I am an avid video game player, and although this machine exceeded my expectations as far as compatibility goes, an 8MB video card can only get you so far. Although this was able to smoothly handle most games that required a video card double that size, a lot of newer games require 32MB and beyond, and this absolutely cannot handle that. It was able to handle a game as powerful as Ghost Recon and NHL 2002, however for some reason it was unable to handle games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and The Game of Life. For normal application use, such as office programs, the internet, DVD movies, and even photo editing software, this ran perfectly. I also use Macromedia Flash to make movies, and this had no problem handling that. The battery life was outstanding on this computer, and it even came with a back-up that fits in the CD-RW bay. Overall, the computer was pretty reliable. The only crashes I had were when I tried to do things on it that a laptop has no business doing. The boot up time was average speed for a laptop. Now that I have settled down, I have sold my 2701US and bought a destop that is twice as powerful for 3/4 the price, but is not becuase I was dissatisfied with my 2701US. It just that laptops are made for a specific purpose, and if you try to pretend this is a desktop and use it accordingly, you will be bitterly disappointed. If you want a great Laptop computer, look no further. The 2701US is a great buy.
Rating:
Summary: A Suprising Exception to Compaq's Image
Review: I bought this laptop in Feb. 2002 on a whim while browsing Best Buy's return aisle. It didn't have the Floppy or any of the CDs but it was about $300 cheaper than a new one. At the time I wasn't aware of Compaq's reputation for having probably the worse customer service in the known universe, but I was quickly introduced after finding myself in their 800 number black hole (a voice-prompt carousel designed to frustrate customers into hanging up); and all I wanted were the restore CDs!
Luckily I found out they can be downloaded from the HP Website. However the laptop itself is suprisingly good. Key features are the seperate DVD & CDRW drives and the JBL speakers. I was playing a music CD & my friends had to go outside to hear themselves talk. There is minimal distortion at high volume - something that quality desktop speakers have trouble doing.
Now for the bad: Must boot up to have a music CD play but hey it's an 8lb laptop not a CD Player. Intermittingly the keyboard interface becomes hashed on some bootups - letters are numbers etc. unless I reboot & the mouse button became worn after a few months of left-clicking that I now use a USB Mouse & Keyboard. Other problems that were XP Home/Install related (driver searches on boot-up,etc) until I did a fresh install of Pro. Also for a time I had SuSe Linux 8.0 dual booting no problems except it ran very hot, uninstalled it because with a 20GB hard drive things got cramped real fast.
I started out with 8mb video and 256mb RAM and upgraded to 32mb video & 512mb RAM, bought the port replicator and a PCMCIA-USB 2.0 Card and have been using my 2700US as a desktop relacement for a little over a year now flawlessly, except for a problem using an external monitor until I upgraded the video driver for dual monitor support. I use several desktops but I keep going back to my 2700 because it's capabilities are evenly balanced -DVD viewing, web surfing, CD-Burning, & music with non-tinny quality speakers, but Compaq's Customer Service is by far the worse HP can't save them so I can only give 4 stars but this is truly a 5 star laptop for those who have taken the chance - like me - to own one.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Computer. Competitive Price.
Review: I had some problems installing win2k server on this, but it may very well be because both w2k server cd's that I have are scratched. I wiped XPhome off and put on XPpro just fine. Compaq has [bad] customer service and finding drivers for certain devices if you want to deviate from XP may be troubling -- they only have some on their site. I wish it could play CDs even when its not booted up (pretty common feature now). Other than that, it's nice to have the dual optical drives rather than the combo drives that everyone has -- that way you can burn straight from one to the other and cut out a lot of time. Graphics are solid for it's price -- I'll have to upgrade in 9-12 months though. It can handle most any 3d games that are out right now if I take off the vSync option and optimize the card for performance over graphics in the control panel. Good price. Looks nice (graphically and physically). Runs quiet. Very stable (I leave it on for weeks sometimes). Comes with an extra battery and swappable drive capability (swap a HD, floppy, extra battery or whatever). Great battery life! Woops my friends HP. P.S. Be wary of any laptops with "good" native resolutions. This is 1400x1050...anything higher on a 15" laptop is almost unusable.
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