Customer Reviews
Great refurbished laptop for $399 
2007-12-01
I picked up this laptop at Tigerdirect after Thanksgiving for my beloved mother in law. They had it for $399 without rebates - how nice is that. It's a refurbished laptop that supposedly comes with a 90 day warranty, but upon inspection - the receipt as well as the manual say this unit has a 1 year warranty through HP. Nice surprise! The laptop was flawless upon arrival, without any scratches on the case or screen.
This is my second compaq laptop and 5th computer overall. I do a lot of tweaking, and this unit definitely needs a bit to make it a star performer. Many don't realize Vista takes 512mb of ram just to operate. So with a gig of memory, half the brains are already accounted for. You can get around this by eliminating a bunch of start up programs, as well as completely deleting several others.
I recommend deleting the trial version of Office - it's a huge file and will take some time. Simply copy a version of Office from your home pc on a keychain drive and load it to this laptop. There's no reason to buy Office when you already have it on another pc. Microsoft allows you to share their software up to 2x. Delete the 60 day trial of Norton, Windows Defender, and turn off the HP Total Care advisor. You can download spyware/antivirus programming for free online (Spybot and Adaware work well and don't constantly download updates - they ask you to do that). As far as the gadgets, they do take up a bit of processing power, but running the date and clock shouldn't slow you down too much, and it's nice to have those items on the desktop. Also delete the internet setup programs on the desktop
The specs on the pc are well above average for a $400 - $500 laptop. Vista premium, 1 gig of memory, 80gig hard drive, Athlon dual core processor, WXGA 15.4" screen, GeForce 6150 graphics card, 3 USB slots, and the list goes on.
To say this isn't a screaming deal would be denying yourself a great laptop for a great price. You will have a very hard time finding any laptop for $399, let alone one with these specs. Any laptop at any price is going to need some tweaks to operate efficiently with the drain Vista imposes on memory.
I give this 5/5 stars due to the surprise 1 year warranty, Vista Premium, and the $399 price tag. It would be 4/5 if the price was $599 or higher.
Very good computer, but! buy more memory for it... 
2007-10-10
Well, to make a short review of this laptop i bought some days ago, i will say the computer is great, the design is pretty cool, and it includes vista premium which is nice... the HDD is enough, the screen resolution is outstanding as well... the processor is really good...
Everything is good except the memory... i comes with 1Gb memory, but for Windows Vista that is not enough.. i had to buy some more memory for $80 bucks... so with this computer is FULLY recommended to have 2Gb memory at least...
Thats the only flaw i found in this laptop, but c'mon.. the price is great, it comes with plenty of stuff... if u got $60-$80 to buy more memory, this laptop becomes an incredible device.
So go for it, and get this laptop
Nice laptop when you get rebates and special offers- worth looking at 2007-08-06
I am new to laptop's and I wanted to get a basic cheap laptop that would perform simple internet surfing and school work. I bought the Compaq F572US from Home Depot for $629 plus $180 in rebates so the total price was $449.99 + taxes. This computer has the Premium Vista system, 1GB memory, CD/DVD burner w/lightscribe, 60 harddrive, Windows Media Center, and much more. This thing has more than I wanted but, I'm glad i got it. I thing that I don't like about it is how hot it gets underneath the mouse pad it get's very warm after an 1 hour of use, not sure if all laptops are like this but, I def. need to buy a cooling pad for it since I put it on my lap to use. The cooling fan is extra quiet you can't even tell it is running, the cd/dvd player on the other hand you can hear when it's loading. There is alot of bundle software crap that def. can be erased if you want to free up more hard drive space. I bought a Linksys G wireless router to work with this laptop and so far it is working excellent - highly recommeded combo! Overall this laptop is well worth the money spent, I am happy and I'm hoping I will be able to enjoy it for many years to come.
Excellent budget laptop 2007-08-05
1st, battery life is about 2+ hours at the max which is average. It's missing an express card slot but has 3 2.0 usb slots. No bluetooth but wifi g. The cover doesn't "latch" shut and there are is no s/d card reader. What makes this laptop very good is the price / features, processor and o/s. This is my 2nd Vista premium computer and now that I have worked out the kinks ( reducing the page file to 650 mb, turning off unnecessary services and using tweak vi(tm) to tune it up) it's actually fairly quick. The downside is tons of trial ware (ms office 2007, symantic, & the intrusive HP Help Center) but these are rectified by simply uninstalling. The set up is VERY long with vista because MS will have to upload in excess of 20 critical updates right after you boot up the 1st time. But Vista is elegant, and uses ram MUCH better than xp. Also vista Side bar Gadgets are cool as well. If you can get this under $500 you have a decent bargain, but more than that I would compare very hard with other models. If I got this under $400 I would give it 5, 6 or 7 stars but at $449 with no tax or shipping this is a 4.5 star deal out of 5. HP / Compaq products have always been very good to me so I expect quality and long life.
Excellent computer! 2007-07-13
I purchased this one for my finacee for her birthday, and I have used it more than she has. The performance scores for "Vista Experience" are finally where they should be for an entry level machine - 4.5 or higher on everything except graphics. This makes for one fast machine!
The DVD burner is nice as well as the Altec Lansing speakers. I don't mind the Athlon X2 CPU, because it seems to pack more power than my Turion X2 at work!
Very smooth and desirable note! : )
Good if cheap 
2008-05-03
I purchased this computer for $350 after rebates from Fry's a few months ago. For basic browsing and office needs, this computer works just fine. However, I have some definite problems with this computer:
* 3 USB ports are not enough. Adding a hub will slow down your rate of copying large files back and forth to an external drive, so you will need to attach IO devices directly to the computer.
* The DVD burner takes a long time to burn a DVD, compared to my Compaq Presario desktop.
* The nVidia video card has a bug with an external monitor. Unless you turn off the monitor, if you let is automatically shut off, the cursor may disappear when using this screen. The workaround is to turn on cursor trails, but this makes the cursor less smooth to use.
* The hardware is 32-bit. I upgraded the memory to 4GB, but, due to the hardware limitation of the laptop, the amount of memory recognized is less than 3GB.
But, again, considering that this laptop sells at half the price of other laptops, it's a very good price, despite my irritations with it.
good basic laptop computer 2008-01-12
As advertised. Windows Vista Home premium has niced functionalities but one must get used to it and that may take a while. Resolution of the monitor is very good. Weight is a little too much. The bad thing is the power outlet is on the right side as opposed to the back (like most IBMs)
Bottom oine: a solid basic laptop computer, good for beginners
So good, so far! 2007-12-30
Though I have owned and/or used many computers, this is my first laptop. So far I love it. When I began using it I kept having unexpected shutdowns, Until I relized (probable as most laptop users relize) my laptop was overheating. I immediately purchased a cheap $15-20 dollar cooler pad. I have not only had no problems since, but am able to view a full dvd movie with no interruptions.
The new Vista is a little annoying with so many updates that don't always download in working order as they should, but I am in the hopes that as I have my computer for a while that this will let up.
PS...The big screen is GREAT!
Great Buy 2007-12-28
I bought this computer for my college student daughter. She has been using it mostly for word documents, music downloads etc. We are both quite pleased with the computer speed in comparison with other models in the same class and higher price range. The large monitor is great also!
very happy 2007-12-24
The laptop was just as described. I was leary of buying something "reconditioned", but it was fine. Only use it for internet searching and playing games, so don't need a large hard drive. Don't know how the performance would be if I had alot of pictures downloaded, etc., but it's adequate for my needs--especially for $399.
