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Compaq Presario 2209CL Intel Celeron M 1.4GHz

Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 | Laptop and Notebook Computer Reviews, Reviews | 1 Comment

This refurbished laptop computer lets you get the power of higher priced computers for a rock bottom price.

This computer with quite a range of features allowing you to do all the things you need without having to upgrade soon.

Although it comes with a slightly slower Celron M, this cheap laptop computer excels in other areas. It’s huge 15 inch monitor is one of these, allowing a huge viewing area for those who are used to small laptop monitors.

It comes equipped with fast DDR333/PC2700 ram and 512MB of it. This provides a huge advantage when running the slightly memory hungry operating systems we use today, allowing lots of power for other things too.

It’s bus speed is 400MHz, which is another factor in this discount laptop computers favor. The faster bus allows information to pass faster between the components of the computer, providing more performance than a simple processor upgrade might.

The hard drive is a standard 60GB affair. The optical drive is a CDRW, DVD-ROM combo drive. For this price range this is more than fine, in fact it’s great. Although it might be one of the first things I would consider upgrading.

The graphics is handled by a built in Intel Integrated Graphics controller which uses 64MB of the system memory.

As well as all these, it has wireless LAN support, so you can find internet hotspots anywhere you go. Modem ports and USB 2.0 round off the package.

One other useful feature is that the touchpad which is used when no mouse is present can be turned off, avoiding accidentally pressing it while typing documents or working on other things that don’t require the mouse.

Great laptop for an even better price.

Plextor PX716UF External DVD writer

Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 | DVD and CD Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

This is one of the coolest external DVD burners I have seen. It is fully featured, burning as fast as any internal DVD burner, which is quite an accomplishment.

This drive would certainly prove useful for people who want to use the drive on more than one computer. It offers 16x writing on both formats as well as supporting dual layer burning.

My only gripe is the pricetag, nearly 250 bucks. Yes, it’s a cool looking and useful burner, but for that price, if you were going to move it between 4 or less locations, you could just buy internals for each place.

With that said it is still useful. For those who plan to do lots of data transfer on many computers, this high speed machine would suit well. Offering good speeds and useability.

You would still have to install software at every place you use the burner too, but for the buyer who has nearly everything, this is a good buy.

Samsung Internal DVD writer

Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 | DVD and CD Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

This Samsung DVD writer offers burning of both DVD+ and DVD- formats, as well as being able to burn double layer discs.

The speeds of this writer make it one of the fatest too. No suffering waiting for this drive. At only a smidgen over fifty bucks, this drive is the perfect addition for those looking to upgrade.

Although this drive comes with free software, reports have it that it does not do a good job. The software might be suitable for you if you don’t do too much burning, but an upgrade is probably necessary.

With that said, many other writers in this price range don’t come with any software, so you at least have something to try out first.

Great value for a wholesale dvdr.

Acer AL 1912 19 inch 1280×1024 LCD Monitor

Tuesday, April 19th, 2005 | Monitor Reviews, Reviews | 3 Comments

This is one of the best value 19inch LCD monitors I have seen. Although it is now easier to find cheap computer monitors and especially cheap flat panel computer monitors, this is still a good find.

It features a full 19inch viewable area, which is perfect for anyone doing application that require this kind of area like designers, or anyone who just likes things big.

The maximum screen resolution of 1280×1024 is reasonable for this size of screen. Although I would expect it to be able to support up to 1600×1200 the size it will go up to should be enough to fit large amounts of data onscreen, while not becoming too small.

The monitor itself is black with white buttons at the front bottom of the monitor.

HP Compaq XW4100 Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz

Monday, April 18th, 2005 | Desktop Computer Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

A top desktop computer from one of the moremost computer companies around. HP desktop computers never fail to deliver. Although their price may be a little higher than the equivalent specs on a computer from a lesser known company. This discount desktop computer should not be ignored.

It’s main features are pretty impressive for a workstation PC. It comes with an Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz socket 478 processor, giving you more than enough power for everyday operations and more.

Memory is a larger than usual 1GB, this provides a lot of extra room for running a whole host of programs while doing work or playing games. Unfortunately all of the memory slots are taken up, which means that if you want to upgrade you will have to replace one or two that are in there already. But with 1GB of DDR333/PC-2700 memory in there, you probably won’t need to upgrade before you need a new computer.

The hard drive is a huge 160GB monster. As well as it’s large size, it also boasts the newer kind of connection SATA to connect to the motherboard inside the computer. This new faster technology combined with the 7200RPM rotation speed of the drive allow fast transfer, speeding up the computer.

The DVD writer is not out of place in a machine like this, as DVD writers become more and more common, so they will become the norm. It is not the highest speed drive you can buy, but will do the job more than satisfactorily.

The graphics is handled by a seperate nVIDIA GeForce 2 MX400 video card with 32MB of memory, which is plugged into the the AGP 4x video card slot in the computer. This video card will be more than enough for even the home user who decides to put their skill to test with 3D games. It will not however provide enough for the hard core gamer, but that’s not really the intention of this computer.

It has all the usual extras that come with new computers including: a Network port for LAN support, a mouse and USB.

This computer will serve well in almost any environment. It’s wide array of features mean that it will be a long while before it will need to be upgraded. You also can’t ignore the after sales service offered by HP Compaq. A top desktop computer with a good specification.

eMachines W3050 AMD Sempron 3000+

Monday, April 18th, 2005 | Desktop Computer Reviews, Reviews | 1 Comment

This sub $400 dollar machine features some hard to beat features for a refurbished complete desktop computer. It definitely gets a mention up there in the ranks of refurbished desktop computers.

This machine comes from the the reputable eMachines company, which strives to sell desktop computers at very good value.

This model features an AMD Sempron 3000+ processor which means that it’s speed when compared to an Intel is about 3.0Ghz. This is a standard budget processor from the AMD corporation. It serves well for home use.

It comes with a respectable 512MB of DDR ram, which is more or less standard these days. It should offer the versatility to allow you to run almost any application you could need. And it has slots available if you need to upgrade in the future.

It’s graphics comes courtesy of the onboard nVidia GeForce 4 MX graphics. This should be more than sufficient to allow you to run reasonable high resolutions on a flat panel computer monitor. There are plenty of cheap computer monitors available to match this PC.

Data storage comes courtesy of a huge 80GB hard drive, which will provide more than enough space for all your information. If that’s not enough, it comes with a DVD writer. This DVD writer is capable of writing to any DVD format you can think of, allowing you to save tons of space on your hard disk, and store those home movies you cherish.

Besides all of these, it comes packed with all sorts of extras. Most notable of these would be the card reader. No more fussing around with a whole heap of card readers for each different thing. These slots are located at the front of the computer for easy access and usability.

Audio plugs, LAN RJ-45 port and modem ports round out the computer. It also includes speakers.

This computer would be most ideal for the home user, who mostly uses their computer for typing documents and surfing the web. It is well able to do other things like play your favorite MP3s, and because of the DVD writer, play your favorite movies too. My recommendations for upgrades would be to upgrade the memory to 1GB if you intend to more graphics intensive work, to go for a seperate video card.

You will need to buy a computer monitor seperately.