Rico And His Compaq Presario V3532TU

Rico Sta. Cruz is a talented web designer. I asked him about his laptop – a Presario V3532TU.

The Specs:

• Processor Intel® Coreâ„¢ 2 Duo T7100 (1.80 GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
• Chipset Mobile Intel 965GM Express Chipset
• OS Genuine Windows Vistaâ„¢ Home Premium
• Graphics Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
• Display Panel 14.1-inch WXGA High-Definition** BrightView Widescreen Display
• Standard Memory 1GB
• Hard Drive 160GB
• Optical Drive Super Multi 8X DVD±RW with Double Layer Support
• Networking/Wireless High speed 56K modem, integrated 10/100 LAN, 802.11a/b/g WLAN with Bluetooth
• External Card Expansion ExpressCard slot/54 slot (supports both 34 and 54 form factors)
• Media card Integrated 5-in-1 digital memory reader slot (xD, SD, MMC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick PRO)
• I/O Ports “VGA, USB 2.0 (up to 3), IEEE 1394, RJ-11, RJ-45, headphone, microphone jack, Consumer IR,
• Omni-directional microphones (2), AC adapter, S-video out, expansion port for HP xb3000 Notebook Expansion
• Base, Kensington lock”
• Battery 6 cell Lithium Ion

Here’s what he says about it:

What laptop do you use? Brand? Model? Specs?
Compaq Presario V3532TU. It’s a 14.1″ laptop with Core 2 Duo (1.8ghz), a 160GB SATA disk, and 1GB of DDR2 memory. (which I upgraded to 2GB after buying it). It also has onboard video, Intel X3100.

When did you buy it?
It was around August 30, 2007, so to date I’ve had it for a little over a month.

What was your main buying criteria for this laptop?
It might be shallow, but the main reason I chose this over other laptops is it’s looks. HP/Compaq has consistently been on top in the Notebook PC market with regards to their product design.

The second of course is specs. My minimum requirement, being a graphic artist/designer, is at least a Core 2 Duo, and the laptop was one of the nicest contenders in it’s price range.

What other laptops were you looking at before you decided on this laptop?
My first choice was the HP Pavilions, but they were a little too high for my price range. I also considered Apple’s MacBook but in the end I decided not to go through with the OSX switch.

Were your computing needs satisfied after buying your laptop?
Yes, especially after a 2GB upgrade. But the screen is a terrible letdown, doing graphic work without an external monitor for me is very risky and something I generally avoid.

Would you recommend this laptop to others?
Depends on the needs of the buyer. For those thinking of doing graphic work on the go, the short answer is no — have a look at my answer about what’s bad about it below. But for anyone looking for a decently-powered compact laptop, it does it’s job really well.

What’s GOOD about your laptop? What did you really like about it?
One good thing about it is that the surface is glossy. This means that you’ll need to clean it more often, but on the other hand this means you won’t get the dreaded discolored palm rest. Cleaning is simple too — water+alcohol and a piece of cloth will do.

It’s also very silent. The fans generally run at minimal speeds when the system doesn’t demand for too much cooling.

The specs are great, too. Core 2 Duo + 1GB memory is more than enough for a lot of people. Even the onboard X3100 video performed rather well, a few notches below my desktop’s Nvidia GeForce 5500. Not much of gamer, but I got it to run Halo 2 and Alice at rather decent speeds.

Also, Ubuntu (Gutsy 7.10 Tribe 5) ran on it with no problems (no driver issues, etc). Well, except that the video card is blacklisted in Compiz, but there’s a quick fix for that somewhere. My setup, by the way, is a dual boot of Windows XP SP2 and Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy (I uninstalled the bundled Vista to make way for these).

What’s BAD about your laptop? What you think could be improved about it.
There’s one absolute fatal flaw to it that I’ve mentioned already: the screen. Images are visibly inaccurate. Colors are much less saturated than they should, and the contrast ratio isn’t exactly incredible either. I always have to plug in an external monitor if I’m to do any serious graphic work.

Also, like most notebooks today, it comes with Windows Vista. Those wishing to downgrade it to Windows XP will have a hard time: HP/Compaq’s website offers no driver downloads for XP (promoting the widespread use of Vista I guess). You will be able to find them though at the vendor sites of the individual components ( e.g., Intel’s site for the Intel board).

There are also some small things I didn’t like, but is rather subjective and I bet some will disagree with me. One, the volume controls are touch-activated: this looks sleek but you don’t get tactile feedback when changing the volume. Another is that all the ports are on the side (the back side is reserved for the battery), which may look awkward for those used to plugging things in at the back.

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He’s got Ubuntu Linux running on his laptop! This is the first time I’ve seen a graphic designer try design work using an Ubuntu-based laptop. Well, it works for him.

Screenshot of Rico’s laptop