Compaq Presario V6101 Mini-Review

As far as entry-level notebook computers go the Comapq Presario V6101US (V6000 Series) is not too shabby. Having picked one up through a “doorbuster” sale back during the Thanksgiving rush I thought I would share my impressions, including how Microsoft’s latest OS Windows Vista performs on this system. Featuring a AMD Sempron processor and 512mb ram the V6101US shows it’s true colors as a budget notebook right away. Although video is provided by a Nvidia Go 6150 display adapter I definitely was not expecting any real video performance due to the use of shared system memory with the video controller. All things aside, I ended up being pleasantly surprised with the overall performance of the notebook and find it a very usable piece of equipment.

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Like all my mini-reviews I won’t be going into extreme detail regarding extreme specifications or performance of this notebook. I like to give my overall impressions and to discuss the notebook from a user’s point of view rather than perform a technical dissection that yields no real information for people wanting to purchase this machine.

First off, lets put this system in perspective in terms of what exactly IS a budget notebook. Well, in the case of the Presario V6101US it means a price point south of $600, or $549 to be exact. What do you get for that price? Quite a bit actually, even the ability to run Windows Vista if you want (purchased separately).

Basic system specifications include:

Compaq V6101US Laptop Computer
15.4″ Widescreen (1280×800) Glossy Display
Mobile AMD Sempron™ 3400+
Built-in 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100 Ethernet
512MB DDR2 memory (later upgraded to 2GB)
80GB hard drive (5400rpm) / DVD/CDRW Drive
OEM OS: Windows XP Media Center Edition (Later upgraded to Windows Vista)

Initial Impressions
Looking like a typical Windows notebook the Compaq Presario V6101 won’t impress your friends. It does feature some nice touches that at least give it a more quality feel than other budget notebooks. Several indicator lights along the top of the notebook display the status of power, volume and if the trackpad is enabled or not (is this a feature?) each of which glows a nice shade of blue whenever the notebook is powered up. Along the edge of the case there is also a status indicator for wireless and the power connector glows blue when plugged in. All these glowing LEDs might sound silly but it does go a long way to making things at least appear to be higher quality. The weight is a bit on the heavy side for my taste but not so bad that you would mind carrying it around in your bag for typical distances. One issue I did notice is that the notebook is not evenly balanced, in that it tends to tip towards the display when it is on your lap. Not a huge issue, but enough to annoy you if you are using it on your lap for an extended period of time.

As for the display, something I tend to be overly picky about, I was pleasantly surprised to find it better than I had hoped for such a budget notebook. The 15.4″ LCD was bright enough for use under normal office lighting and compared very well even to the outstanding display on my Macbook Pro. The only thing I did not particularly like about the display was the glossy finish. It generated far more glare under direct lighting than I could stand and I found myself turning lights off, or moving the notebook around to fix this problem.

Performance
As I stated at the beginning of this review, I won’t be talking about numeric performance or any type of benchmarking results here. What I will tell you is that this notebook performed quite well under the included Windows XP Media Center Edition in running typical applications such as Microsoft Word and browsing the internet. So how does this notebook compare to other systems? From a performance standpoint most systems running XP perform daily tasks are almost exactly the same speed and this notebook is no exception. Even with only 512mb ram I found the system was very responsive and most tasks performed without any hard drive paging lag at all. Of course running memory hogging applications will (and did) ground things to a crawl but adding additional memory fixed this (as expected) problem.

Like many budget notebooks I did not expect much from the battery and in this regard I was not disappointed nor was I surprised. Battery life ranged from a very brief 1.5 hours (running World of Warcraft not plugged in) to just about 3 hours with the display brightness turned all the way down and wireless turned off. It is worth noting that you can purchase a high capacity battery that extends the runtime to over 4 hours which is not bad at all.

Included Software
Like all Windows systems I have purchased, there are tons of applications that are included for which I never seem to have any use for. In the case of the Compaq I found the usual complement of useless software (such as free AOL!) and proceeded to uninstall most of it. Some of the applications, like the DVD/CD-R/RW burning software do an adequate job so I left them alone. I did like the fact that they installed and made Netscape 8 the default browser vs. Internet Explorer. That said, I went ahead and installed Firefox anyway

Windows Vista Compatibility
One of the features that enticed me to purchase this notebook in the first place was the claimed Windows Vista compatibility in the form of the “Vista Ready” sticker displayed prominently on the front of the machine. So after using the notebook for a few days with Windows XP Media Center Edition I decided to go ahead and install Windows Vista. I had previously been running Vista under Parallels on my Macbook Pro with good results but I wanted to play with the new Aero theme and to get a good working knowledge of how Vista handles on a typical Windows notebook vs. the latest dual core Mac notebooks.

So how did things go? Not too bad but there were several issues but I did manage to get Vista running with minimal issues. You can read more about it here. Unfortunately things have not being going well recently so look for an update on my Vista experience soon!

Conclusion
Overall I like the Compaq V6101US since it provides a solid notebook for a very fair price. It has just the right features for those who need a basic notebook and want something with a nice screen and future Windows Vista compatibility. Those looking for a top of the line notebook will of course be disappointed in the V6101 but overall the value is there with all the usual features anyone needs for daily tasks like surfing the internet and light business use.