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A friend of my mine who is in Hong Kong at the moment is looking at these two notebooks that fall under his budget- this Compaq presario and this HP.

Now, he is <i><b>not going to play games</i></b>. Also, the 4200RPM disk (in the presario) and 512 meg RAM (in both) would be temporary as he is going to ramp up those later.

What needs to decided is whether the presario has good enough quality to hold up over 3-4 years. Have heard that the paint job on presario is lousy (particularly the keyboard/touchpad area). Don't doubt that the HP is built solid, but the presario has a BrightView widescreen 15" vs the normal 15" of HP and better multimedia features. Rest all looks same, think that the X300 in the HP is basically Xpress 200 radeon renamed...am I right?

Please advice ......n enlighten!!! [<b>he has only till sunday to decide</b>]

The Radeon Xpress 200M is much slower than the X300 - I know, the lappy I'm using right now has an Xpress 200M. Still, MUCH better than a Intel integrated card. (200M is integrated, FWIW.)

Quality? Compaq and HP? Are you kidding me?

Has he checked Lenovo/IBM out?

I'm using a ThinkPad R51e right now... I gotta recommend that, IBM's laptops are pretty solid, and worth the added cost (or slower components if you're buying at the same price as the competition).

Well, he was gunning for a thinkpad but a decent cinfig one just out of his reach. I do believe that the NX6125 would be faster and more rugged than the presario....but for the widescreen. Think he'll have to sacrifice the screen for a much better package.


Keep the advice(s) cummin....

If he is in HK, then there are more choices than Compaq/HP. Try look for other brands like Acer, Asus and Samsung. They build good units too.

A trip to Wanchai and/or Sham Shui Poo is what he needs.