Compaq Presario C500T Review Discussion

[mtruo001]

This is a review of the Compaq Presario C500 budget notebook made by HP. It is a 15.4-inch screen system, making it a mainstream notebook. Although using ancient Celeron M technology, this notebook offers some nice features at an even better price.

Read the full content of this Article: Compaq Presario C500T Review

[SideSwipe]

I think theres a typo there, it's Everest not Everex

and are you sure that SuperPi test is right? it's faster than a Pentium M of the same speed and suprisingly close to the C2D.

Good review though and a amazingly good deal I have to say!

[k3l0]

This Celeron M isn't antiquated technology; it's a single core Yonah

[jetstar]

Good review! The Super Pi score is too good to be true, though, for a Celeron M processor.

[Andrew Baxter]

I think theres a typo there, it's Everest not Everex

and are you sure that SuperPi test is right? it's faster than a Pentium M of the same speed and suprisingly close to the C2D.

Good review though and a amazingly good deal I have to say!

Nice catch, Everex is actually the name of a notebook brand (www.everex.com) and it was supposed to be Everest.

That Super Pi score does look way too good to be right -- maybe I under estimate the power of the Celeron though.

[mtruo001]

I believe the Super Pi score is correct. All I did was install the program and run it on the laptop.

I ran it at 2M and it gave me the 1m 29s readout.
I also ran the 1M and 512kb modes and it gave a linear decrease in time.

Can anyone explain why the Super Pi results are better than the Pentium M and approaching the Core Duo? Would the upgraded ram have anything to do with it?? Or how about the way single cores vs duel cores operate on calculate a single number?

[R4000]

Nice review on the C500T. It is always great to see the budget units getting some screen time at NBR!

That said, I would also like to add that the C500T is a mature & stable notebook design. For those with keen eyes, this lappy should look familiar to Compaq fans. It is a rebadge of the venerable V5000 series notebook from the previous generation Compaq line.

It is much sturdier than it's predecessor, and also runs much cooler. I currently have both platforms (albeit the AMD versions), and there is no comparison. I have been very happy with this lappy, and have not experienced the random keyboard problems that seemed to manifest itself on this design.

As for the 2.3 Vista Experience Index rating, I was a bit surprised at first. The GMA950 is usually capable of achieving better, but this may be due to the amount of memory currently allocated to the 950 with 512mb system ram (at the time of the "first-boot" test).

Again, good job & enjoy your lappy!


Mike

[siLc]

A coursemate of mine has one of these lappies, branded as HP G3000. Indeed it is a pretty basic affair. The touchpad`s surface isnt very good, it has only 2 USB ports and you basically gotta the whole (read: half) machine apart just to add a stick of RAM. It originally came with XP Home but surprisingly runs Vista Business (from MSDN AA) pretty good.

[SideSwipe]

Yeah the celeron M isnt an old dog but that score was kinda shocking lol

i have an old 1.6ghz celeron M 1MB cache lappy, ill fire it up and see what the super pi scores are.

would the extra 1GB RAM have made a difference? mine only has 512MB btw

[R4000]

A coursemate of mine has one of these lappies, branded as HP G3000. Indeed it is a pretty basic affair. The touchpad`s surface isnt very good, it has only 2 USB ports and you basically gotta the whole (read: half) machine apart just to add a stick of RAM. It originally came with XP Home but surprisingly runs Vista Business (from MSDN AA) pretty good.

Curious. The C500T & V5000 have the underside hatch where both dimms are accessible. The R4000 series has only one user-accessible dimm, and is of a much more cumbersome design. The other sodimm is retrieved by dissassembling the notebook as you pointed out.