Compaq Presario R3001us

1/19/04 - The Compaq Presario R3001us is a brand new budget oriented desktop replacement. In fact, the price is only just above the $1,000 price preventing it from being in the budget laptops category. The question is, does the R3001us have enough to make it competitive?

The R3001us is powered by a Pentium 4-M 2.4 GHz processor. This is one of the highest rated Pentium 4-M processors as most manufacturers have gone to either the Pentium-M or the standard desktop processors. Power should be sufficient for all applications. The 256MB of PC2700 memory is a bit on the low side. This is generally considered the minimum memory to have with Windows XP.

Storage on the system is good. It comes standard with a 30GB hard drive and 24x CD-RW drive. In addition to these, the R3001us also has an integrated 6-in-1 media card reader. This should be useful for those with digital peripherals that use flash cards.

Graphics are a bit mixed. The system does feature a nice 15.4" wide screen LCD, but the graphics processor is very limited. The integrated Radeon Mobility 9000 has some 3D acceleration support, but with the 64MB of shared system memory don't expect to be playing any games on this unit.

Another disappointing area is networking. Wireless networking has become so common that most systems should come with it now, but the 3001us fails to even include an 802.11b adapter.

Overall, the R3001us does perform well for the average user and with the low price, that makes it a good deal.