WHY COMPAQ PCs SUCK

[bigred]

I just bought one and this close to taking it back. No, it isn't slow, it doesn't have inferior components. No it isn't failing to work....

...well at least not that I can tell. See it's kinda hard to know if the CD/DVD burner works....because they didn't include any burner software. Gee why stop there, they should have sold it to me with MS-DOS instead of Windows too.

Now I would say that's about the lamest thing I ever saw, but....

When my CD door is open, the way it's designed the open CD door blocks you from pushing the button to close it. The only way is to push the door youself, which is not good for the mechanism on top of being just plain ultra, totally, painfully, massively STUPID. How in the F*** does something so obvious make it out to production???? :mad:

I really want everyone responsible for the design and test of these things tortured slowly.

Like make them use their own products for a start.

[El Greco]

When my CD door is open, the way it's designed the open CD door blocks you from pushing the button to close it. The only way is to push the door youself, which is not good for the mechanism on top of being just plain ultra, totally, painfully, massively STUPID.

I don't think I've ever closed the tray by pushing the button, except for testing purposes. I always push the door. And I've used all my drives veeeeeery heavily. I just find it easier, and never had a probelm with the mechanisms.

[Ducky]

the only complaint I had about Compaq when I was doing PC/Network support was that at the time they put he bios on a partition on the hard disk, making it impossible for us to replace the primary hard drive without getting one from compaq directly. Eventually someone had the bright idea to ghost the hidden partition with the bios on it, but then we had to do that for every different compaq in the field, which was about 1500 of them total (not sure how many specific model differences we had, but they all were implimented over a period of 3 or 4 years.)

When we implimented the dells, we never had that problem, and Dell was nice enough to have us build our drives with all specialized software needed and ship them the disk back so that everything we ordered from them was pre-imaged with out software and they provided restore CDs based on those images.

I could care less what the computer says on the label, I just want to know if it works and is easily supported. In my experience at that company the Dells were easier to support. Of course I left that job in 2000, so I don't know what the current state of affairs with dell or compaq is.

[Starthinker]

We're a Compaq-HP only corp and I can't say enough nice things about them. In fact, I have a $40,000 order for desktops and laptops crossing my desk as I type this. The only problems I've ever had were with a certain model of laptop that we purchased 4 years ago. I've had maybe 1 or 2 desktops break in the last 6 years. At any given time we have about 200 desktops running, but have gone through several duty cycles so I've seen at least 600 Compaqs pass through our doors. Also note that the last order I made, which was about 20 desktops, all came with burners but the software was on CD, not pre-loaded, so check your box. Yes, I thought that was odd, but didn't think much of it. I think the quality of HP printers are suffering lately but at least when they break I get a replacement a day or two later and just repack the old one and send it back. Very quick and convenient. Stay away from HP D-135's. Older HP printers seem to last forever.

You may have legit complaints but we'll never use another brand based on our experience. And I don't think I've ever used the button to close a CD/DVD drawer either. Just tap the tray and it closes, it's designed to do that.

(I'll step off my Compaq soapbox now.)

[Smike]

free dvd and cd burning software (http://www.deepburner.com/?r=download) which may solve part of your problem.

Windows also has a built-in burner if you're just copying files.

[Zbu]

I got one thing to say about Compaq: at least they're not eMachines. Nothing says 'quality' like taking old business computers, getting them to work, and then selling them at Wal-Mart for half the price of a cheap Dell desktop.

[bruto]

I don't really think you can blame Compaq for the design of the CD drives, unless you want them to spec non-standard drives for their machines. CD drive layouts haven't changed since before tower cases were the norm, and drives were at eye level, but you can't really blame Compaq for that.

I wouldn't worry about pushing the tray. The drives are designed to allow this. In audio CD players that use a belt to drive the tray, this can accelerate belt wear, but otherwise I don't think it matters.

[Soapy Sam]

I find a simple, light tap with a fingertip is enough to shut any CD tray.
There's no need to push it.

[davefoc]

My experience goes with Compaq goes way back.

I worked for an IBM clone startup that competed with Compaq. I took them apart to compare what they did with what we did and was aware of some of their approaches.

At that time, I just thought they were great. They did just about everything right that we did wrong. Which might explain why we went broke.

Over the years I stayed in PC related businesses and would occasionally work on different PC's. At some point it seemed like Compaq lost their way. One of the real pain in the asses for PC's as far as I am concerned is when companies make things different than the standard without making them better and once Compaq became large enough they thought they could just make things different and force people to deal with Compaq propietary crap without adding any particular advantage for the consumer. This kind of arrogance had a lot to do with the demise of the IBM's PC business I suspect.

Having said that I recently bought my daughters each a Compaq laptop that we bought at Fry's for $525. I couldn't believe the feature set that we got for that price. Both computers have been running great and we have had almost no problems. There was a networking problem that involved a particular encryption protocol over the wireless link. It seemed like the problem was solved when all the updates were fully loaded. At any rate we haven't experienced any difficulties for several months now.


On the how to close the CD drive issue:
I do either one but I try to use the button because I think it might be a little less likely to damage the drive but I am sure that I have closed hundreds of CD drives over the years by just pusing on the extended disc bay and have never had a problem.

On the no CD burner software.
I just use the windows software to burn CD's. When would one want to use a separate program for that?

[qayak]

I have an older HP tower and both the cd drive and DVD burner must be closed by pushing on the tray as the button is covered when open. I have had it for several years and not a single problem/

I bought my daughter a Compaq laptop last Christmas and it has worked flawlessly. I was trying to buy a case for it and couldn't find one large enough. The salesman told me that I should upgrade my laptop because this one was obviously too old. He then asked if he could open it and almost wet his pants when he saw the features it came with. He said that it was a $2200.00 computer. I told him it was only $1600.00 at his competitor's which is where I bought it.

I take her laptop with me on trips to download all the video I shoot and burn it to DVD. It renders and burns movies very quickly with the software that came on the CD in the box.

Here's an interesting thing. We live a block away from a local coffee shop. My daughter takes her laptop there and does her homework online. She can pick up our wireless connection because we paid the extra $20.00 and got the best one available! :D

[webfusion]

You should have purchased an eMachine (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=67571), buddy.

[Starthinker]

One of the real pain in the asses for PC's as far as I am concerned is when companies make things different than the standard without making them better and once Compaq became large enough they thought they could just make things different and force people to deal with Compaq propietary crap without adding any particular advantage for the consumer.

I was going to agree with this point. I have hundreds of power cables but Compaq laptops made their clover-leaf shaped cable with no real reason other than it's Compaq proprietary. They tried the same thing when they went to a mini-centronics ports on their printers so you had to buy an HP cable instead of using one of the standard centronics cables of which any shop has dozens of. They did drop that after a few models and everything is USB now so that is no longer an issue. Of course we're an all-Compaq shop so we lots of little star-drivers now but there is not really a reason they couldn't use a regular phillips screw like everyone else.

But then when I think about it, everything else was pretty much standard so they're not that far off. Other than some cables and screws, what was proprietary? Of course, I've only dealt with them in the last 6 or 7 years but they use all the standard parts I've seen in any other computer. Cases go together a bit differently but standard parts fit in them. I didn't like those stupid hard drive rails but as long as you kept a set you were okay but they seem to have gotten away from that now.

[bigred]

free dvd and cd burning software (http://www.deepburner.com/?r=download) which may solve part of your problem.

Windows also has a built-in burner if you're just copying files.Greatly appreciate it (and all the replies - except maybe the smirky emachine ones; FYI they appear to have become respectable so nyah nyahh :) ). I want to both copy files and also make music CDs so the Windows thing will only help w/one, but it would enable me to test the drive. What/where is it? Must've missed it on the first pass through that brilliant vertical menu system that I've hated since (19)95.

[richardm]

...well at least not that I can tell. See it's kinda hard to know if the CD/DVD burner works....because they didn't include any burner software. Gee why stop there, they should have sold it to me with MS-DOS instead of Windows too.


I'm assuming that you're using Windows XP. In which case, I thought it came with CD Burning software built-in - does it not? DVD stuff is different because IIRC you need a licence to create a DVD. Don't quote me on that! I am quite surprised that they didn't bundle something like Nero with the machine, though.

Burning CDs in Win-XP (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman_august13.mspx)

When my CD door is open, the way it's designed the open CD door blocks you from pushing the button to close it. The only way is to push the door youselfJust to reiterate: It's supposed to work like that. Give the drawer a bit of a nudge and it will close. It won't damage it.

[bigred]

smike thanks, Deep Burner worked just fine.

richm, thx for the link. I found this: "Windows XP supports the creation of audio CDs through the Media Player..." which was my goal ie not just copying files. I'll give that a shot when I get home, out of curiousity if nothing else.

I still think the CD button thing is lame, but feel better about the thing re. potential long-term damage to the open/closing mechanism by pushing it (if it break I'm sending y'all the bill :cool: ). Thx all!

[Almo]

Because they're PCs. The Compaq part is irrelevant. ;)

[ReFLeX]

richm, thx for the link. I found this: "Windows XP supports the creation of audio CDs through the Media Player..." which was my goal ie not just copying files. I'll give that a shot when I get home, out of curiousity if nothing else.

It's very easy with Windows Media Player 10. My version of XP came with 9 so look into that.

[Soapy Sam]

As Compaq (in their pre HP days) were the first company to reverse engineer the IBM pc and produce PC "clones" , there's a case for saying that how Compaq do things is the standard.

HP was a great engineering company who (IMO) lost it's way in the 1990s.
I had HP calculators and a computer 20 some years ago. In those days their support was set up for corporate customers. Owning a single HP computer could be a lonely business. I would hope that at least has improved.

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

......well at least not that I can tell. See it's kinda hard to know if the CD/DVD burner works....because they didn't include any burner software. Gee why stop there, they should have sold it to me with MS-DOS instead of Windows too.....

I feel your pain... or more accurately I have experienced your pain. About three years ago I got this laptop (an HP Pavilion zt3000 or so). My dear hubby, being a computer professional was not satisfied with the configuration that existed out of the box, so he flat-lined it and reloaded the software with the enclosed program CDs.

The enclosed CDs included Windows XP and other software (like AOHell... which he did not load!)... but it did not include the software to burn DVDs. It could burn CDs just fine (using the Windows XP software), but not DVDs. Email conversations with the support personnel went no where. They just kept saying to load the Roxio DVD write software.

One problem... the software CD that came with this laptop did not include ANY software by Roxio!

It seems that the wrong CD was loaded into the box.

So after dealing with a clueless Indian supprort person (to be fair, there was no reason for her to believe that the wrong CD was packed in the box) I looked for other options.

I knew that the hardware could burn DVDs because programs because I could burn video and picture DVDs through Ulead VideoStudio and Adobe Album. I just could not do it with a drop and click set-up like I could with CDs.

After looking around, I bought Sonic RecordNow. Not only can it burn data DVDs, but it could rip audio CDs into mp3 files.

So for an extra bit of money (I forgot how much it cost, somewhere between $20 to $50) I got something that worked.

With it I ripped all of dear hubby's rock/jazz collection, about 12 Gb of data, into mp3 to load onto a player (not an iPod!) for his birthday. I also have used it to burn several data DVDs (I like keeping my videos in data mpeg2 format instead of playable format so I can create DVDs with other software, like Pinnacle).

And tonight...after the latest and greatest Windows Update from this morning (oooh... I'm using Internet Explorer 7!) I was unable to burn a CD by selecting a directory and pasting it to the CD drive. It just ignored me.

So I used my very old and now outdated Sonic Recordnow... and it worked.

What is interesting, is that when I upgraded my desktop to something bigger and better to handle video files to a Multi-media HP with an AMD 64 processor... the DVD software included was Roxio/Sonic RecordNow! Same stuff as what I bought! (only you can't rip mp3s from music CDs).

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

By the way... I checked DeepBurner's website. It is only about 18 months old. I wish it was availabe when I bought my version of Sonic RecordNow about three years ago.

Oh, well... it still works.

[Beerina]

When my CD door is open, the way it's designed the open CD door blocks you from pushing the button to close it. The only way is to push the door youself, which is not good for the mechanism on top of being just plain ultra, totally, painfully, massively STUPID. How in the F*** does something so obvious make it out to production???? :mad:

It is a rather foolish design -- very few people have a "desktop" pc that is actually on the desktop anymore. And laptops are so flat there's little room to reach underneath the tray, either.

Just be easy when you push it in so you don't strip the gears.

And if it's a Compaq, it may have CD controls on the keyboard. Maybe one of those is open/close?

[Beerina]

Here's an interesting thing. We live a block away from a local coffee shop. My daughter takes her laptop there and does her homework online. She can pick up our wireless connection because we paid the extra $20.00 and got the best one available! :D

You're supposed to do the opposite -- try to scam off the coffee shop's free wireless connection, only a block away. :blush:

[bigred]

It is a rather foolish design -- very few people have a "desktop" pc that is actually on the desktop anymore. And laptops are so flat there's little room to reach underneath the tray, either.

Just be easy when you push it in so you don't strip the gears.

And if it's a Compaq, it may have CD controls on the keyboard. Maybe one of those is open/close?
THx for reminding me about something else. With my old PC - an HP, ironically - if the door was open I could just double-click on the drive letter in File Mgt and it would close. Not so here.

Nice improvement guys. :rolleyes:

[slingblade]

When my CD door is open, the way it's designed the open CD door blocks you from pushing the button to close it. The only way is to push the door youself, which is not good for the mechanism on top of being just plain ultra, totally, painfully, massively STUPID. How in the F*** does something so obvious make it out to production???? :mad:

I really want everyone responsible for the design and test of these things tortured slowly.

Like make them use their own products for a start.

I cannot agree more. I bought one four years ago, and I've been using computers since 1995. I have never needed help setting one up, but with this piece of crap, I had to call customer service which is, of course, IN INDIA. Figured out right away I could not use anything but dictionary English--no idiom or slang or colloquialisms. OK, that's not so bad. I don't want to be an Ugly American. But he still couldn't understand much of what I was saying. He didn't have a good grasp on computer jargon. It was just a nightmare call.

Then the printer that came with the computer broke down in the first month. They refused to replace it, saying that this particular model was only sold two years ago, and so mine was out of warranty. :jaw-dropp But I just bought it a month ago!

"Well, we'll need your original receipt."

"Okay, I'll make a copy--"

"No, we need the original receipt."

"But if anything goes wrong with my computer, I'LL need the original receipt!"

"It doesn't really matter, Ma'am. We know we haven't sold this model in two years, so your warranty has expired."

"You mean the fact that Wal-Mart kept this thing on the shelf for two years is MY FAULT?"

"That's not possible, Ma'am."

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"I guess I am, Ma'am. Have a nice day."

Four years later, that computer was too slow and outmoded, so I used the last of my financial aid from college to buy a new one. Yep. A Compaq. I tried to get a different brand, but I couldn't afford any of them that had the features I needed except the Compaq. Sigh. Okay. Maybe in four years, they've gotten their act together, and I need to buy this now, for school.

Get it home, and I noticed right away the problem with the CD drive door. It had been hammered into me as gospel to NEVER touch the tray. Always use the button to close it. But the button is located ON THE DOOR, so when it opens, the button is useless. I just close it veeeeeeery carefully.

Software. It came with Office 2003. But only a trial version! It was only good for 30 days, at which point I'd have to buy the Office software.

What the hell? It's a good thing I'd bought the Student/Teacher edition a year ago, or as a writer who uses Word a dozen times a day or more, I'd be so screwed. I've never, ever heard of a Windows-based computer that did not come preloaded with a full version of Office.

It also came preloaded with a crapload of spyware like Wild Tangent, and a couple dozen trial versions of everything under the sun, which I've never used. And the damned thing still does not tolerate QuickTime. Using it screws up my computer every time, so I just won't install it. I know, plenty of you have never had problems with QuickTime. It must just be me, but I don't really believe that, so there you are. My comp doc told me, the last time he had to wipe and reload my system, not to ever use it again. Fine with me.

Now, other than all that, I like it. It came with enough RAM to actually run it, a Gig, instead of 256 mg which won't run a coffee maker. It has a slew of flash drive and USB ports up front, and the speaker jack is up front, too, which I really like.

It has an ATI vid card, which I like better than Nvidia, and it runs like a dream most of the time.

But when the time comes to get a new system, it will NOT be a Compaq.

/rant

[Starthinker]

I cannot agree more. I bought one four years ago, and I've been using computers since 1995. I have never needed help setting one up, but with this piece of crap, I had to call customer service which is, of course, IN INDIA. Figured out right away I could not use anything but dictionary English--no idiom or slang or colloquialisms. OK, that's not so bad. I don't want to be an Ugly American. But he still couldn't understand much of what I was saying. He didn't have a good grasp on computer jargon. It was just a nightmare call.

Then the printer that came with the computer broke down in the first month. They refused to replace it, saying that this particular model was only sold two years ago, and so mine was out of warranty. :jaw-dropp But I just bought it a month ago!

"Well, we'll need your original receipt."

"Okay, I'll make a copy--"

"No, we need the original receipt."

"But if anything goes wrong with my computer, I'LL need the original receipt!"

"It doesn't really matter, Ma'am. We know we haven't sold this model in two years, so your warranty has expired."

"You mean the fact that Wal-Mart kept this thing on the shelf for two years is MY FAULT?"

"That's not possible, Ma'am."

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"I guess I am, Ma'am. Have a nice day."

Four years later, that computer was too slow and outmoded, so I used the last of my financial aid from college to buy a new one. Yep. A Compaq. I tried to get a different brand, but I couldn't afford any of them that had the features I needed except the Compaq. Sigh. Okay. Maybe in four years, they've gotten their act together, and I need to buy this now, for school.

Get it home, and I noticed right away the problem with the CD drive door. It had been hammered into me as gospel to NEVER touch the tray. Always use the button to close it. But the button is located ON THE DOOR, so when it opens, the button is useless. I just close it veeeeeeery carefully.

Software. It came with Office 2003. But only a trial version! It was only good for 30 days, at which point I'd have to buy the Office software.

What the hell? It's a good thing I'd bought the Student/Teacher edition a year ago, or as a writer who uses Word a dozen times a day or more, I'd be so screwed. I've never, ever heard of a Windows-based computer that did not come preloaded with a full version of Office.

It also came preloaded with a crapload of spyware like Wild Tangent, and a couple dozen trial versions of everything under the sun, which I've never used. And the damned thing still does not tolerate QuickTime. Using it screws up my computer every time, so I just won't install it. I know, plenty of you have never had problems with QuickTime. It must just be me, but I don't really believe that, so there you are. My comp doc told me, the last time he had to wipe and reload my system, not to ever use it again. Fine with me.

Now, other than all that, I like it. It came with enough RAM to actually run it, a Gig, instead of 256 mg which won't run a coffee maker. It has a slew of flash drive and USB ports up front, and the speaker jack is up front, too, which I really like.

It has an ATI vid card, which I like better than Nvidia, and it runs like a dream most of the time.

But when the time comes to get a new system, it will NOT be a Compaq.

/rant

Most of your complaints can apply to any computer. Ever see the unwanted software that comes on a Dell? And no brand will come with an Office Suite unless you pay for it. (This is like $300+ from Microsoft) You were lucky to get a trial version. And, as stated several times above, you can close the tray with a tap or light push, it's designed to do that and won't hurt anything.

I don't think you would have been happy no matter what brand you bought.

Just got the first part of my order in, 15 Compaq nx6310 laptops and 10 DX2200 desktops. The only complaint I have after setting up 9 laptops so far is that they did not come with restore disks. The desktops did. The laptops have a "restore partition" which I hate (first time I've run into this from Compaq in all my years although I know they've used it before) and they also came with a backup and recovery manager. So I think, okay, it will burn a recovery CD, all I have to do is run the software. 11 Disks!! I certainly hope this isn't the direction they are going because this sucks. I haven't gotten an answer yet as to whether I need a seperate set for each laptop or if I can run it on one and use it on another.

The only software that came on it that I had to remove was Norton and Google toolbar. Virtually everything else was needed (Sonic for burning, and a DVD player) but I did remove some HP specific helper programs (credential manager and wireless manager and such). Otherwise they seem like nice, normal computers and no problems out of the box so far.

What I really hate is that I have to set up Kodak camera software on each of these and you get to a part to sign up for a Kodak picture site and your only options are to create a new account, use an existing account, or be reminded later. I had to hack the registry to get the reminder to stop popping up. What the heck is the matter with Kodak, didn't it occur to them that some people might not want to sign up for their online service? This bugs me more than anything Compaq ever did.

[bigred]

The only complaint I have after setting up 9 laptops so far is that they did not come with restore disks. The desktops did. The laptops have a "restore partition" which I hate (first time I've run into this from Compaq in all my years although I know they've used it before) and they also came with a backup and recovery manager. So I think, okay, it will burn a recovery CD, all I have to do is run the software. 11 Disks!! I certainly hope this isn't the direction they are going because this sucks. Yes it does. Your honor, Exhibit (whatever, I lost count). :)

I'm almost to the point of doing what I should've done right out of the box, ie reformat the freakin HD and get rid of all the crapola. However space isn't exactly an issue (250GB with about 20GB taken out of the box) so I've held off....

[slingblade]

Most of your complaints can apply to any computer. Ever see the unwanted software that comes on a Dell? And no brand will come with an Office Suite unless you pay for it. (This is like $300+ from Microsoft)

Not true. The first Compaq I bought had a full version of Office.


I don't think you would have been happy no matter what brand you bought.

Gee, thanks. Remind me again what I did to you?

[Starthinker]

Not true. The first Compaq I bought had a full version of Office.

Yes, but I am sure it was added to the purchase price as opposed to one without Office.




Gee, thanks. Remind me again what I did to you?

I didn't mean for this to be taken as an insult or anything, it's just that every one of your complaints would have been valid no matter what brand you purchased. Every new computer comes with bloatware whether it's a Compaq, Dell, Gateway, or whatever. And no brand will give you Office unless you pay for it. And I think they all do off-shore tech support now. You said yourself this was only your second purchase in 4 years and I've purchased 600 in the last 6 years for this company alone and hundreds more for other customers so I have some experience with what comes on a computer and what doesn't.

Again, I'm sorry if I offended you, I'm just saying your points fit every major brand.

For all you Compaq/HP bashers, my next budget is $14,000.00 for 15 desktops in February. If not Compaq/HP, then what would you all suggest? Just business apps, and 19" monitors. I just took out 5 Compaqs that were set up 6 years ago and were still on their factory install of Win98! (Our last 98 machines, thank goodness). Not so much as a bad fan or sticky keyboard in all that time (and had non-scroll wheel mouses, ugh). What ever I get needs that kind of reliability.

Any suggestions?

[mummymonkey]

We've just moved back to Dell because HP's support sucked. That may be a local issue, the HP account manager could barely tie her own shoe laces. We still use HP for printers though.

[davefoc]

Just a small comment on the "no restore disk" comment.

Ours didn't come with restore disks but you did have the option of making a restore disk from the computer and an option of wiping out the restore partition on the harddrive if you wanted to.

[slingblade]

Yes, but I am sure it was added to the purchase price as opposed to one without Office.

I don't know about that. I paid around $500 for it, off the shelf at Wal-Mart. I must have just been lucky or something.

I'm just saying your points fit every major brand.

Then I shall have to make a clone, or switch to Mac. My first two comps were clones, made by a friend. The only reason I bought a name brand was to have a Windows disk, and by the time I bought it, they were no longer including Windows disks with them. :mad:

16 CDs to make my restore disks. Man. Nope, next time, it's a clone for me.

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

I...
16 CDs to make my restore disks. Man. Nope, next time, it's a clone for me.

That is why I backup the image with a 200 or 300 Gb external hard drive... and I have two in case one gets corrupted. (note... the backup images of about 6 different computers are stored on them).

[bruto]

Things certainly do change fast. When I got the Dell desktop I'm at right now (yeah, I'm still running a PIII/500 and Win 98 SE, never reinstalled or reformatted), back in about 2000, it came bundled with relatively little junk ware, but with a true and complete OEM Windows 98 CD and Microsoft Works with Word 2000, also with the complete installation disks, along with all the drivers and whatnot on another CD, and separate CD's for the CDRW software and the modem. Office was extra, and since this was a refurb, and I didn't need full office, I got what came with it. When I got my Dell laptop a couple of years later, it still had the Works with Word disks, and a Windows XP CD, though this one was Dell-specific, and still had the other support CD's. The desktop also came with a big fat set of dead-tree manuals. Those were the days, eh?

I don't know what I'll get when this think conks out or when they stop making a version of Turbo Tax that runs on Win98. Maybe I'll have to roll my own.