Like many other people I stayed out all night on the thanksgiving night in line to get the best deals at our local Circuit City. I ended up buying a Compaq Presario C700 laptop for $300 (after all the rebates and discounts – normaly $650 to $700).
The laptop has Vista on it as the operating system. It was my first time using Vista. It wasn’t as bad until I realized that Vista uses more than twice the memory that Windows XP uses. My laptop had 1GB memory and was using close to 700MB of it with just Windows Vista coming up. So I added another 1GB of memory to it myself and took it to 2GB. It is faster and better now. As for the vista, I still haven’t had any problems with it, but we’ll see if all my softwares run fine on it.
So far I have noticed one bad thing about the laptop. It gets extremely hot – the bottom part of it does -. I used to have a laptop (SONY) that overheated all the time and turned off by itself because of the heat. But that started happening after I had owned the laptop for over a year and used it 24/7. I haven’t owned this laptop for even a week yet.
One other missing feature is that it doesn’t have the middle button that IBM and DELL do (that is used as mouse instead of the mouse pad on the laptop).
The fan on the laptop is very loud too. Every 5 minutes or so, the fan works very fast and makes a fairly loud noise which is annoying.
I’ll add more reviews to this page as I use the laptop.
There is wide range and variety of computer notebooks available but before deciding its better to consider reading reviews about particular product and company. One of reliable machinery is acer laptop. But on the other hand compaq notebook is a part of Presario family of computers known for quality and rich experience.
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i have one of these running mac os x leopard. its now worthy of being labelled a well functioning laptop. I had always found it rather slow running windows, and it would for some weird reason take quite a long time to load and function under the windows banner. One of the reasons you will find it hot (especially in Australia like myself) the aussie ones are equipped with the intel celeron or smeleron as some might know them as, i replaced it with an intel core duo 2, and it runs considerably cooler and obviously quicker. also placed a blu-ray drive in it, runs great. for those who are game enough, try running the ideneb mac os x on it, you’ll be amazed by the performance, and how efficient it runs. Not something for everyone though.
I have the Compaq Presario C700, I’ve had it for now 3 Years, and have not experienced any problems, how every I switched to XP, then started running the Windows 7 beta, and I perform multiple task from recording audio to DVDs, and presentations. It runs daily, I use a Notebook Stand, that allows to Laptop to maintain a cool temperature, and I use a wireless keyboard and mouse, this is only when I am at my main location, but when traveling I use the onboard keyboard and mouse pad and have no issues. With all manufactuerd computers you will get now two in five that will not have problems, as a user you shuld test the system before the warrenty expires, if the system reacts as meny of you have described then it is a harware issue, you could either have bad memory or a component on the mainboard may not be functioning correctly, any PC or Laptop should not fail except for harddrives, the only failure that should occur is when a new operating system requires more resources than the PC or Notebook can accommodate. If you have Vista upgrade to the new Vista Windows 7, requires less resources than Vista.
I have owned this Presario C700 since March 08. The screen is not longer functioning properly. The cable going from the screen to the motherboard has an issue. If I wiggle the wire it will correct the issue. I have searched online, called Fry’s & Micro Center. I cannot find one to purchase. I find the cable online but cannot find anyone that has it in stock. I would not recommend this computer to anyone. You cannot get parts to repair………..
Richard
I have had a Compaq Presario C700 for the past year. The heat sink fail because it was made of meltable plastic that couldn’t take the heat and I sent it back to replace it. A little bit after I got my laptop back, the power supplier came apart some how and i didn’t want to risk using it so i had to replace it and now it has a short (probably my fault). The fan is loud and sounds like one of the blades broke (or possibly warped because of the heat). Occasionally this laptop gives me a blue screen of death and crashes. Right now the hard drive is showing signs of failure so i guess ill have to get that replaced too. This painfully heavy laptop is not worth it unless you like repairing it. After reading what I said DO NOT INVEST MONEY INTO BUYING THIS THING!!!!!
Im selling my Compac C700 as I just don’t use it as often as I thought. I have a company computer and thought it would be a good idea to get a back up….Not so much.
Purchased 14 months ago, looks brand new and paid 480 for it.
Willing to take 350.
I have not put anything extra on the computer as it has exactly what was on it as when I purchased. Seriously, I have used this 10 times.
Call if interested
Rob 312 608 0065
Chicago
i want to install window 7 in my compaq preserio c700,,but in my laptop have window vista i want to save window vista coz it is a licensed,,and i have not a Cd of window vista,,,company dont gave me cd of vista,,so wht i do?
I bought my Presario c700 from Best Buy over a year ago and had problems from the start. The computer would stay on for about 5 minutes and then shut off automatically. It did get very hot and was very noisey. I called Best Buy and they chalked the problem up to me not being used to a lap top and told me I just hadn’t charged it sufficienty. So….on and on with the computer never staying on. I bought new cables because I was told that the charging cable may have been bad. I finally got tired of it and bought a desk top again (different brand).
I finally took the Presario into a different repair person and was told the motherboard was bad and they had a lot of returns and problems with this ‘cheapie’ model. He said it was probably bad from the start. Of course, by this time, it was a week past my one year warranty so I am out the $450+ for the original purchase, the cost of repair accessments and the new cable. The computer was a lemon. I can’t even get anyone at HP to write me back. They got money from me once for this but I will never buy from them again. Same with Best Buy.
My wife has a c700. It came with 1Gb of RAM (2x512Mb which filled the mem slots), which is way too low to run applications of any consequence in Vista.
Upgraded to a single 2Gb DDR2 RAM stick and it works way better.
Considering running Internet Explorer and opening a couple of tabs uses up nearly 1Gb, upgrading RAM is a cheap way to improve the laptop.
I note that many people are experiencing fan issues: we had the same, but I noticed that the cooling fins trap fluff and lint behind them. Get a torch and shine it into the cooling fins in the vent at the side. If you look at the back of the fins you’ll be amazed how much c**p is lodged there, stopping airflow. Turn the laptop off, turn it upside down and put a vacuum cleaner hose over the fan hole on the base. You’ll be amazed how much fluff comes out. I had huge clumps of it come out and we don’t have a dusty house at all. Must be just how the fins and airflow are arranged. Once the fins are clear, the laptop fan stays off most of the time and it still stays cool.
In order to press the middle button, you have to press the right and the left trackpad button
This will HELP you for good.
No options for firewire at all…..my friend owns this and wants to buy an audio interface for recording….firewire is the best way to go and not much more expensive than equivalent usb interfaces. He will not buy one with firewire because this laptop does not have a firewire port, nor does it have the capabilities to add one seeing as there is no PCMCIA slot on the computer….what the hell HP??? either provide one of the other….I’m so glad I bought a deal that has both firewire and PCMCIA on it…along with 4 usb 2.0 ports(one more than this compaq)
I have a Compaq presario c700, I bought it a year ago, its been working very well until I mistakenly dropped it and the screen broke (the monitor). I wonder If anyone out there is willing to sell their used Compaq presario c700. It not worth buying a new screen (monitor) to replace the broken one, because it cost almost as much as buying a new one. please reply anyone
I bought my presario c700t for about 300 bucks back at one of those big sales. I like the finish on it and the looks. The size is nice and it comes well equipped, however i had most of the same problems you mentioned. First, the 1 gig of ram to run vista really really hurts performance running anything graphically (games, movies, even flash games online), but thats easily fixable with another gig of ram. My real issue is the overheating and how it affects performance. I have my laptop on a cooling pad with a 12 inch high power fan, just to get the onboard fan to turn off while using basic programs like microsoft word. Now i would understand if it was a high level game, even something as graphic intensive as WoW, but this is basic text input and the computer runs so hot that it sometimes turns itself off. I am very proficient computer user, and this seems to be in excess of any other laptop i have ever tried. I have paid attention to the fan and it runs CONSTANTLY at a very high volume.
Hey, if anyone knows solution for this problem please write it down.
In my display settings, Once I used to had 1280 × 1024 resolution but now only 1024 × 768 resolution is available. Due to this resolution I’m not able to run AERO in my Vista Ultimate edition. I used to reinstall all the driver software, yet there is no use.
THANKS FOR READING.
i have had my COMPAQ c700 for about 1 year and my microfone is stopped,
And the keys go out sometimes, and my fan keeps not working.
Thanx Rach-knights2rememba
hi i have just got the compaq presario c700 laptop does any one have the same problem as me the fan goes of and on every few min ?should the fan go of and on /or should it stay on thanyou lee
I just upgraded to Windows 7 ulitimate and the machien went from complete dog on Vista, to a usable laptop. The upgrade cleared up: the touch pad issue, the long time to display type, and overall usage was great. Driver compatibility was awesome. Even though HP does not list the drivers for WIndows 7 for this laptop, I did a reimage and no major issues, the only driver issue I had was for the keyboard and windows 7 automatically corrected this.
I am running 1.5 GB of memory and a 1.4 GHZ dual core.
I have been using the C700 for 2 years already. I’ve experienced overheating all the time, however if you put it in a well-ventillated place it won’t cause much of a problem. Also, I’ve encountered noises when I inserted a cd rom. The battery also doesn’t last long now. It lasts only 15 minutes on the high performance plan. I’m sending it in for a service upgrade and hope it doesn’t occur again. Overall for the laptop performance, drivers and memory wise. I can say that it is very good. I haven’t encountered a crash ever since I bought it two years ago. If you don’t wish to let your laptop overheat, don’t use it for a prolonged period of time. And changing the battery pack is also a good idea.
I have two C700′s for my kids. One works great, the other overheats and freezes up. upon running diagnostics, the hard rive is bad yet it hasrunfor over a year now and the drive still works but freezes up about an hour after use. I still think it migh be a virus.
i also owned c700., it seems really great at first, but when the time comes and my unit gets old (2 yrs), i experienced so much problem about it. one of this is the CD/DVD ROM, it crashes after a year or less. and now the battery stops working, but still runs when the charger is plugged on. i see 0% available in my battery icon but still working. it is really weird though. maybe it happens when i always use it without a cooling pad. cause when i check the battery, some part of it have burns or brown colored something that makes me think that this is the cause of my battery’s break down. above all this, presario c700 is still great since this is my first notebook that was given to me as a graduation gift.
and still working for a long period of time.,
my c700 often automatically power down due to overheat, especially, when playing a movie
I have this computer for about two years now and my problems started about two months ago, it will freeze up quite frequently, had it done some clean up to speed it up shutting down some precesses that run at startup and worked faster but still has its moments when it just freezes and have to reboot it. It also makes that loud noise when the fan kicks in and runs very hot. recently bought an external cooling fan to cool off the heat that it makes. I was wondering if anybody has problems with the volume buttons or any of the buttons that it has on the keyboard. Overall I have to give this computer a good rating but far from excellent.
I have this laptop as well, and it SUCKS. Regardless of how tight your budget is, it’s not worth the trouble of having it burn your lap and power itself off all the time. In my opinion I’d rather have gotten one of those tiny netbooks than this. I intended to use it for school, but I’m just going to have to get a desktop instead.
i got a laptop (my 1st) o 2 yrs ago. it worked fine . i used it to the limits of a students.
then the drama started .. first the battery back up went …then cd-rw rom got weakened..tht all automatically
then came diaplay problem…
fluctuating screens.
after 2 weeks of repair search .. i ende up in getting new main board as my main board was burnt ..huh..what a joke…
so my whole laptop is now new.. new HDD , new rom, new battery ,new Main board ..except only screen
arest all is ok…
this mavchine goes well in starting … but after 2 years it sucks.
so if u plan to buy it do it if u r nt a lap holic ok….
this is my personal advice.
I bought this laptop over two years ago on sale for under $500 AUS (Celeron, 512mb RAM) an absolute bargain at the time. I bought 2 gb of RAM and installed it straight away, improved the performance of Windows Vista Basic out of site. After a year or so I noticed it couldnt keep up with what I was putting it through, and wouldnt play blu ray rips (which I never expected it to). So instead of replacing the laptop, I bought a Core 2 Duo T7300 cpu (2 GHz) and using a service manual I found online, I pulled it apart and upgraded it. Biggest change ever, it can now take every thing I throw at it, like a different machine all together. The next step to increase performance would be to install an SSD hard drive to improve boot times and application loading speeds, which are as fast or faster than my desktop anyway! The only downside is that it will never be good at gaming as the integrated graphics (Intel 965 chipset) is pretty basic and suits internet or document work.
i have c700 and i think it is the best laptop of the world, i am using 512MB ram on vista and i have no problem with it and it works very excellent but sometimes i feel that 1GB ram is good for vista. everything is going good and i have no heating problem and i am using my laptop from last one and a half year and it working like a brand new laptop.
To those complaining about mousepad sensitivity: I initially had the same problem with my G7000 (the factory defaults are insane) and found the sensitivity is adjustable from with in the System Settings -> Mouse menu.
I bought a HP Presario C700 and a Dell Inspiron at the same time 2 years ago for the same price. I’ve been using them the same way on the same network. The HP’s hard disk failed, the keyboard has shorts, the wireless connection doesn’t work, and the mouse pad is flakey. No problems with the Dell. I’ll never buy HP again.
Our family has had this laptop for about 2-3 years now it gets full time use for internet and some games!
We got the ram upgraded to 2Gb and i think it really needed that!
Its a great laptop and the only time its let us down is when we got a virus i highly recommend this laptop because for the price its amazing!
The over heating problem is there is not enough air getting to the fan. On the bottom of the computer where the fan is take a little screwdriver and make some of the holes bigger. It is a design flaw. Once the holes are bigger everything will work with out overheating the computer. Try to solve the simple problems first.
hello,i buy presario c700 but i can’t start wi-fi on it.can you help me how it start?please
Do you have the driver installed on it?
Hyper mousepad sensitivity – screws up my typing constantly & often makes me want to throw this laptop across the room. System Settings -> Mouse menu ….nope, not on this computer, to fix the problem. I have a friend (works as IT for a bank) that fixed it once for me but Vista cork sucking updates seem to reset these advancements & remove the once added way to adjust the sensitivity. I can’t seem to find anything resembling touchpad sensitivity. I don’t think I can even find the word “touch pad” now that I think about it. Alps drivers seem to be a common denomonator amoungst all of us. Some where there is a driver or software that allows this to be adjusted to a desensitized level that is good to work with. I just don’t know where it is.
I’m having same problems overheating, shutting off when my pc is 100 degrees celicus, and i dont have any other problems.
I’m having a problem with the videocard, it needs a replacement. Do you know a site where I can find second hand parts for HP Presario C700? Thx.
i have a compaq c700 ,, it has overheating probelm,,, its fan is not working,,, and having many probelms ,,,
i have a compaq presario c700 with windows xp installed, it’s hard to find and install the right driver for xp.
this my specs:
intel celeron 1.86 Ghz 1 mB L2 cache
1.5 GB ram
384 mb VGA, the only problem the fan is quiet noisy.
can this laptop support 4 GB RAM
I’m not sure Ahmed. I would think so
Hy, all! I’m Titusz from Hungary, Europe.
I have C700 also. I bought it from one of my friend. It was in factory condition. So few months after I’ve decided to upgrade it with New powerful CPU an more RAM, and it’s faster than before. I have same problems with my machine like you. with overheating but it’s standard problem with it. So don’t worry about it. If you have problems with the overheat then shut down, there”s very easy trick what you can do at home. Just screw down the back of the CPU and clean up the FAN and the air intake. You will see it will fix your problems. So repeat this every half of a year.
So My C700 specifications NOW!!!
CPU type Mobile DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo T7700, 2400 MHz (just one cpu is better than mine at the T7700 series the 2600MHz)
SYSTEM MEMORY 3062 MB (DDR2 SDRAM) (it could be upgraded 64bit with 4Gb if I’ll desire it)
All the stuffs are the same like in stock machines.
I hope I can help for some guys.
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