Frontpage Story #57

I'm a 20 year old student, and for the last year I've had a Persario <sobs>. I've experienced nothing but grief with this thing.

First of all, the sound card (which claims to be Aureal A3D compadible) freezes the computer whenever you run anything with A3D on. This would be simple enough to remedy, IF it wasn't part of my motherboard. I installed an AWE 64 card into my computer...but NOW i can't get CD sound without completely taking apart my computer because there's not enough room to actually connect my DVD rom to my AWE64.

Then it's on to the AGP 2x card, which is ALSO on the motherboard. This thing is incompadable with EVERY industry standard to date. Even Direct 3D wouldn't work. What's the point of having an AGP card if you have to run everything in software rendering? To further my frusteration, there is no way to get any other AGP card installed, due to Cumpaq's genious. You can only do so much with a PCI video card.

The computer also came with a "56k" modem, which is the ONLY thing that's not on the motherboard. This means it's taking up one of the 3 precious expansion slots. This thing has given me NOTHING but trouble since day 1. Before i patched it, it would always tell me i was connected to the net at 112,000bps, which if you know anything about computers, is just plain laughable. I did a benchmark on an open internet connection, and i was connected at roughly 19,000bps. And to boot, my pings were around 900ms. So, i got fed up and went to the compaq homepage....this involved wading through literally 1000's of softpaqs (which were completely unorganised). They had a 'convienent' search engine used for looking for softpaqs, which wanted you to enter the softpaq number into the field. To put it bluntly, this is just plain stupid. You have NO way of knowing the softpaqs you need without going through them nearly 1 by 1.

After i finally patched the modem, i was treated to completely unstable connections, which consisted of sudden disconnects, and eratic pings which ranged from 200ms to well over 1000ms.

In my opinion, they should be paying ME to use this thing, it's been so bug riddled that it's just frustrating. It's imposible to get the system resources up higher than 58%. The mouse stopped working because of a 4 foot fall onto a carpet. The volume controls on my keyboard do little more than freeze the computer. The ZIP drive just plain doesn't work. Hell, i'm afraid to actually drop a DVD into the DVD-ROM. On the bright side, the monitor isn't manufactured by Compaq.

Hopefully they will actually start caring about what they're doing, everyone i know who ever bought a comcrap has vowed not to buy another. I expect more from $3000.

HEIL COMPAQ

Front Page Story
Author: Anton
Email: ka05@yahoo.com