Compaq Presario V6205NR Review

Ok I am going to attempt to do my first product review. Last weekend after many years of love hate relationships with my old Desknote hybrid laptop. It suddenly ended when it decided to just die on me. So there I was with no laptop, I felt like a child that has lost his blankie or ninny... Faced with the task of shelling out a small fortune for a new laptop, I stumbled upon a great deal.

While looking through the local BestBuy store ( yea I know) I found what I consider a good deal. Sitting there on the shelf was the new Compaq Presario v6205NR ok I have to admit I am not and have never been a big Comapaq fan. Well it was cheap and I would have to say I am impressed. The Laptop was on sale normal retail price 749.00, with 150.00 off so I got it for 599.00 So far so good.

I took it home and opened up the box expecting to see loads of instructions to read through, well i was suprised not much in the box just your normal warranty guide, quick start guide, and power adaptor and of course the laptop. I took everything out of the box and there it was a slate gray brand new laptop. Very nice looking not real flashy and kind of plain which is fine with me.

Booting it up: Well now time to get this baby fired up. I plugged in the power cord and then plugged it into the laptop. Haha we have power I thought to my self. I pushed the button to turn it on. Huh? It took like 25 minutes for this thing to setup. I am assuming that it was actually installing the Windows Vista Premium Edition. Finally all setup, as expected when I setup the user account I found loads of software that I did not want or need and boy did it slow down the boot time of the OS.

Well after playing around a bit. I started to remove all of the Compaq branded software and started adding the software I normally use. Now the laptop boots up super fast, I am still in the getting used to phase of using vista but I am transitioning well.

The built in wireless adaptor works great I get some pretty good range out of it as well. I took it to my neighbors house which is probably 100 ft away and connected to my Linksys router with out a hitch.

The screen is crisp and clean with a large widescreen format, I really don't like the shinny plastic covering on the screen it causes a bit of glare. But other than that it is very crisp and clear.

The hard drive is an 80gb 5400 rpm serial ata

It has 2 usb 2.0 ports it could have more in my opinion, there are no firewire ports it has an express card slot, TV out via S-video jack, Compaq expansion port 3, 10/100 ethernet port, built in modem (which I have not used)

Nice touch sensitive volume controls, a bit to sensitive though.

comes equipped with 1gb DDR2 memory, Altec Lansing speakers that actually sound pretty good.

Nvidia Geforce go 6150 with up to 256mb shared memory.

The weight well it is up to you if you think it is to heavy or not, at only 6.6 lbs I am not complaining.


Over all I would have to say for the price I don't think I would have found a better deal. After removing all of the bloatware that was preinstalled by Compaq, it runs great and is superfast.

Here is a link to the specs if you want a better description than what I gave.

Windows Vista in full force

Well it is here for sure Windows Vista has been many years in the making some have been waiting impatiently while others really did not care, or even want to hear the word Microsoft. Either way the time has come and the release was official. Now every new manufactured PC you buy will come packed with Windows Vista. Here are some great tips to help you tweak your Vista settings and get more out of your Windows Vista experience.

Enable Auto-Logon in Windows Vista (Warning: Security Risk)
a) click Start and type 'netplwiz' or click that name on the Start menu
b) in the GUI window that comes up, uncheck the "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer" box
c) click 'Apply'
d) in the new dialog box that opens type the name of the account you want to auto-logon by default (if the account is not normally passworded then it blank)
e) click OK and exit

Delete Hibernate File
When you use hibernate in Windows Vista, it creates a file called hiberfil.sys. This file can grow rather large and you may want to remove it. A simple way to delete it:
a) log on as the Administrator
b) start Command Prompt then type: powercfg -h off
c) hit enter

Show Administrator on Welcome Screen
a) start > run = "control userpasswords2"
b) select administrator account, click reset password (input new pass) and hit "Ok"
c) start > run = "regedit"
d) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > Winlogon > SpecialAccounts > UserList
e) create "DWORD (32bit) Value" with Value Name: Administrator and Value Data: 1

You can get more great tips Here