Office 2010 Professional Plus 32 Bit HP Compaq Pre

Pattern Micro 32-Bit Editors'
Rating

The Compaq Presario CQ62 features a delicate texture within the lid that makes it pleasing to glimpse at and maintain.

Port selection to the CQ62 is quite fundamental. VGA, LAN, and two USB ports, as well as headphone and mic jacks, are within the left.

The keyboard is roomy and,Win 7, even though not pitch best, pretty cozy.

On the right, you will find a modem and 1 of the 3 USB ports. You don’t get a memory card reader or an HDMI connector.
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 10 Remarkably reduced price tag; significant screen; passable overall performance for that funds; moderately beautiful design and style No memory-card slot, Webcam, or HDMI port; stiff mouse buttons; narrow LCD viewing angle; constrained availability Should you will need an incredibly low-cost laptop, the CQ62 is not a bad wager. It is missing some features, nevertheless it delivers decent total functionality contemplating it charges lower than $400.
Price (at time of assessment): $398 (mfr. est.,Office 2010 Professional Plus 32 Bit, as examined)
Crucial Specs Processor: two.1GHz AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P320
Memory: 3GB RAM
Storage: 250GB challenging drive
Optical Push: DVD±RW
Screen: 15.six inches (one,366x768 native resolution)
Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon Hd 4250 (1GB)
Excess weight: five.5 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): one.4x9.7x14.seven inches
Operating System: Windows seven Home Premium (64-bit)
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 Assessment Reviewed by: Jamie Bsales
Critique Date: June 2010
If you’ve been contemplating a $400 netbook exclusively simply because it’s an inexpensive method to nab a functional laptop, Hewlett-Packard, in mix with Wal-Mart, features a persuasive option: a "real" laptop computer. The Compaq Presario CQ62 is a full-size fifteen.6-inch laptop computer with an AMD dual-core processor, available at a beyond-bargain price of just $398 (starting this Sunday, June 13, 2010). That’s less than you’d pay for a refurbished notebook with lesser specs from those deal-a-day sites (or about what you’d pay for a netbook with a fraction of the functionality). The catch: It is lacking some attributes now common even on budget laptops, and it’s available only at Wal-Mart while supplies last.


Usually, budget machines are bland and brick-like. But with its textured imprint finish, the matte-black Presario CQ62 includes a somewhat stylish look. And at 5.five kilos and measuring just 1.4 inches thick, it’s notably compact given the reduced price tag and huge screen. The left and right sides in the gently rounded chassis house an optical push,Windows 7 Starter, three USB ports, a VGA connector, LAN and modem ports, and headphone and mic jacks. That’s it: no flash-memory-card slot, no HDMI connector, no ExpressCard slot, no eSATA port. Also deleted to hit the under-$400 value mark are a Webcam and a fingerprint reader. Some of those items you may be able to live without, especially if the Presario CQ62 would be a secondary machine for you or your household. But we would have preferred to see a card reader and a Webcam make the final cut. To the plus side, the optical push is a full-featured 8x DVD burner with LightScribe disc-labeling abilities, and the Presario CQ62 also includes a 250GB 7,200rpm hard generate and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi wireless networking.


The Presario CQ62’s fifteen.6-inch display screen is bright, and colors in images and video really pop. (The LCD's glossy finish helps.) The resolution is 1,366x768, which makes for quite readable text on Web sites and the like, although more pixels would let you make better use with the expansive real estate for multitasking. The panel’s viewing-angle sweet spot is also somewhat constrained: Move too far off-center, and you’ll notice a brightness shift. To the other hand, the built-in Altec Lansing speakers deliver plenty of volume and good enough sound quality for Web audio and even movies. But as with all budget machines, sound quality for music playback is a bit strident and lacking bass.
We were pleasantly surprised by the keyboard around the Presario CQ62. Many low-cost machines’ keyboards exhibit flex, but the unit on this machine features a solid feel. The flat-top keys have a good amount of up-down travel, and the widely spaced keys are cozy to type on. We’re happy to see that HP has inverted the purpose in the Function ("F") keys, essentially giving you 12 hotkeys for actions such as volume, mute, display screen brightness, next-track/last-track, and so on. Should you want to access a function, you press a Function essential combo.


Less ideal is the Presario CQ62’s touch pad. We like the clean search with the hidden-pad layout, where the touch pad is just not isolated from the surrounding palm rest, but the textured pattern (carried over from the lid) imparts too much friction on your fingers, making mousing a lot less smooth. And the single-bar mouse button (you depress it on one end or the other for left and right clicks) is too narrow and stiff.
As expected, the Presario CQ62 doesn’t have cutting-edge efficiency components. But the two.1GHz AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P320 processor and 3GB of fast DDR3 memory deliver pretty good productivity functionality for a $400 laptop computer. The machine scored 3,152 on our PCMark Vantage benchmark test, which measures all round method efficiency. That’s lower than the $650 Gateway NV5933u we tested recently (it scored 4,493), but it's not alarmingly far off the 3,800 score that is average for the mainstream class. It also manages to beat out similar budget mainstream notebooks from a year ago, which scored as reduced as one,829. Plus, this laptop computer uses the 64-bit version of Windows seven Residence Premium, and it held its own to the 64-bit version of PCMark Vantage, too, with a score of 3,459, just a hair below the $849 Asus UL50Vf’s score of 3,563. That's nice for that cost.


The cracks in overall performance start to show a little more, however, when it comes to multimedia-intensive work. The machine needed 8 minutes and 16 seconds to encode a video on our Windows Media Encoder test, which is more than 3 minutes longer than the Gateway NV5933u took and about 30 seconds longer than the average laptop in this class. On our iTunes encoding trial, in which we convert 11 standard MP3 files to AAC format, the Presario CQ62 completed the task in 6 minutes and 4 seconds, although the Gateway finished in 4:31. (The average showing for this size of program is 4:42.) Finally, on our 32-bit version from the Cinebench ten benchmark test, which taxes all the available cores of a processor, the Presario CQ62 scored 3,927. Here, the gap starts to widen between the Gateway budget entry (five,Key Office 2010,448) and the class average (4,761). But keep in mind the Gateway laptop computer costs nearly twice as much, and the class-average value is over $1,100.
We didn’t expect much in the way of gaming abilities (beyond low-impact Web games) from this machine, and unsurprisingly, we were proper. The ATI Mobility Radeon High definition 4250 graphics chip in the Presario CQ62 delivered 1,901 on 3DMark06 at 1,024x768 resolution and an unplayable 18 frames per second at that resolution in one of our standard test games, Company of Heroes. In this laptop's defense, extremely few budget machines deliver impressive efficiency on these tests. With scores like these, you can expect this machine to render images fine and play video, but video editing, 3D gaming, and other graphics-intensive tasks should be reserved for better-equipped laptops.
As for battery life, the Presario CQ62’s six-cell battery lasted two hours and 23 minutes on our harsh DVD rundown test (in which we loop a movie from disc until the battery conks out). That's just 3 minutes shy of the average battery runtime for this class of laptop. By comparison, the Gateway NV5933u lasted only 1:36.
The Presario CQ62 delivers a serviceable assortment of software for the value. In addition to the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Top quality, which includes the handy Media Center multimedia environment, you also get CyberLink PowerDVD 9 for movie playback and CyberLink DVD Suite for CD and DVD creation. HP also preloads 60-day trials for Norton Internet Security and Microsoft Office 2007. The company backs the Presario CQ62 with a one-year warranty and 24-hour, seven-day toll-free tech support, which is typical for HP and nearly all manufacturers.
To be sure, the Compaq Presario CQ62 just isn't ideal, but this machine is all about the price. If an Atom-processor-powered netbook just isn’t your speed and your computing needs are mostly basic, this is a good choice at the cost. It offers solid-enough functionality for everyday tasks, a nice big display screen, and even a relatively stylish design and style. We wish HP worked in a memory-card reader and a Webcam, as photo sharing on Facebook and Skyping with family members is a likely scenario for those in the market for such a budget machine. But if those functions are lost on you (or on whomever you might be thinking about buying this laptop for as a gift, like Grandpa), you’ll be happy you didn’t have to pay extra for them.
Cost (at time of assessment): $398 (mfr. est., as tested)

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