Compaq R3120ca Review:
I finally got the laptop, after many phone calls back and forth between Futureshop. Their confirmation process in horrible. Basically, if you don’t phone them, they just call you at random times (usually during the day) to confirm your shipping & billing address. On a good note for them, it arrived less than 24 hours after it shipped, and this was with the free option too.
Now onto the review
Packing
The computer came in a huge box (2’ x 2’ x 1.5’) that was filled with some sort of space-suit thing. It was made of huge bubble wrap, the bubbles are very hard to pop. Inside was a smaller Compaq box that encased the laptop, and all the instruction manuals and CD’s. Really great packing, no chance of it getting damaged.
5 out of 5
Build quality
The first thing I noticed when I opened the laptop was its sturdy feel. The latch that holds the screen closed seems very strong and all the exterior buttons feel strong and responsive too. It’s not the most beautiful laptop in the world, but it was definitely built with the idea of function over form in mind considering the placement of ports and buttons. As for the keyboard and touch pad, they both felt well build, the mouse buttons have a nice little rubber grip on them and I really like the font that’s used on the keyboard keys. The only complaint about the keyboard is that in the bottom right, near the arrow keys, it seems a little flimsy because of the unused chunk of plastic which bounces up and down when you use keys in that area. Other than that, flawless.
4.5 out of 5
Performance
This is where I was a little worried when I bought the computer. I thought I should have gone for the AMD 64 chip, but seeing that the 64bit OS was delayed anyways, I definitely made the right choice. Side by side with a 64 bit CPU, the boot up times were almost identical, and loading programs and games showed no noticeable difference. Runs simple programs like word and excel perfectly, and also has no trouble with DVD or Div-X Videos.
5 out of 5
Battery is right around the expectations I had for it. Roughly 2 hours of constant use to drain it. My grandpa played solitaire for 2 hours and only knocked about 40% off the batter life, but that’s not the most intensive test.
3 out of 5
Gaming is the other thing that worried me about this system when I ordered it. Since it had an older gpu (Geforce 4 420 go) I assumed it wouldn’t perform any better than my desktop Geforce 2. I was definitely wrong in this respect. UT 2004 ran amazingly well at highest settings and 600x800 resolution. There was no lag or slowdown at these settings. Once I bumped up the resolution to 800 x 1200 it still ran well at high settings but a few wide open maps (mainly assault maps) got sluggish whenever you zoomed with the scope. Other than that, it again runs beautifully. Quake 3 runs perfect at maxed out settings of course, as well as Jedi Academy. Even NFS Underground runs great at highest settings and only slows down when all the cars are burning rubber at the same time. With particle system turned off, it never slowed at all. I will try Farcry a little later on once I get the video drivers up to date and once I get a chance to actually download the demo.
4 our of 5
Overall this laptop is an excellent system. More than enough for my needs which do include the odd game. Not a top of the line gaming rig, but for $1649, it is more than capable. As long as you don’t plan on running Doom 3 at 1200x800 all settings maxed, this computer can do anything you throw at it. In the future I will most likely add another stick of ram to bring the total to 1 gig and I may invest in an AMD 64 down the road to replace me AMD XP but other than that, the system offers everything I need.
Pictures coming soon
I finally got the laptop, after many phone calls back and forth between Futureshop. Their confirmation process in horrible. Basically, if you don’t phone them, they just call you at random times (usually during the day) to confirm your shipping & billing address. On a good note for them, it arrived less than 24 hours after it shipped, and this was with the free option too.
Now onto the review
Packing
The computer came in a huge box (2’ x 2’ x 1.5’) that was filled with some sort of space-suit thing. It was made of huge bubble wrap, the bubbles are very hard to pop. Inside was a smaller Compaq box that encased the laptop, and all the instruction manuals and CD’s. Really great packing, no chance of it getting damaged.
5 out of 5
Build quality
The first thing I noticed when I opened the laptop was its sturdy feel. The latch that holds the screen closed seems very strong and all the exterior buttons feel strong and responsive too. It’s not the most beautiful laptop in the world, but it was definitely built with the idea of function over form in mind considering the placement of ports and buttons. As for the keyboard and touch pad, they both felt well build, the mouse buttons have a nice little rubber grip on them and I really like the font that’s used on the keyboard keys. The only complaint about the keyboard is that in the bottom right, near the arrow keys, it seems a little flimsy because of the unused chunk of plastic which bounces up and down when you use keys in that area. Other than that, flawless.
4.5 out of 5
Performance
This is where I was a little worried when I bought the computer. I thought I should have gone for the AMD 64 chip, but seeing that the 64bit OS was delayed anyways, I definitely made the right choice. Side by side with a 64 bit CPU, the boot up times were almost identical, and loading programs and games showed no noticeable difference. Runs simple programs like word and excel perfectly, and also has no trouble with DVD or Div-X Videos.
5 out of 5
Battery is right around the expectations I had for it. Roughly 2 hours of constant use to drain it. My grandpa played solitaire for 2 hours and only knocked about 40% off the batter life, but that’s not the most intensive test.
3 out of 5
Gaming is the other thing that worried me about this system when I ordered it. Since it had an older gpu (Geforce 4 420 go) I assumed it wouldn’t perform any better than my desktop Geforce 2. I was definitely wrong in this respect. UT 2004 ran amazingly well at highest settings and 600x800 resolution. There was no lag or slowdown at these settings. Once I bumped up the resolution to 800 x 1200 it still ran well at high settings but a few wide open maps (mainly assault maps) got sluggish whenever you zoomed with the scope. Other than that, it again runs beautifully. Quake 3 runs perfect at maxed out settings of course, as well as Jedi Academy. Even NFS Underground runs great at highest settings and only slows down when all the cars are burning rubber at the same time. With particle system turned off, it never slowed at all. I will try Farcry a little later on once I get the video drivers up to date and once I get a chance to actually download the demo.
4 our of 5
Overall this laptop is an excellent system. More than enough for my needs which do include the odd game. Not a top of the line gaming rig, but for $1649, it is more than capable. As long as you don’t plan on running Doom 3 at 1200x800 all settings maxed, this computer can do anything you throw at it. In the future I will most likely add another stick of ram to bring the total to 1 gig and I may invest in an AMD 64 down the road to replace me AMD XP but other than that, the system offers everything I need.
Pictures coming soon
