12-cell replacement battery and a rant.

Ok, I just bought a Compaq Presario R3000Z series custom built from HP. I opted for the "longer lasting" 12-cell battery for $25 more. I saw in an older thread that the spare parts number for the one I have matches up with a 3.2Ah battery. The 12-cell replacement battery pack has a 6.0Ah rating on HP's site. This sounds really dishonest if this is the case, because the other batteries in the earlier post came within ~.5Ah of power output.

Does anyone know anything else about these batteries, because they don't seem to even have matching part numbers. Also, the battery has very little information. Most batteries have the Ah or mAh rating printed on them, this one doesn't. Come to think of it, there is nothing that distinguishes it as being a 12 cell battery pack.

As a side note, I've been quite disappointed with HP's support team thus far and I haven't talked to them since I recieved my laptop. I made the bonehead mistake of leaving my apartment number off my order, so I called the day after placing the order to have the info updated and even though the computer wasn't scheduled to be shipped for another week, they were happy to tell me that "what will happen is that they will try to deliver it twice and then they will ship the package back." To me, this seems assinine. The machine isn't assembled and they can't do me the favor of tacking a friggin' apartment number onto the address? I also asked to make some modifications to my order on this same day. They couldn't accomidate my requests there either. The bottom line; make sure you have exactly what you want and where you want it shipped before you submit, because the orders are instantly sent to an engraving machine which apparently sets your order in stone. I think it would've been acceptable to bump back my ship date in exchange for getting what I want shipped to the right place.

All griping aside, I'm very pleased with the quality of the laptop. The screen is great, it's very fast, the WiFi works well, all the buttons are in the right places, and it doesn't feel cheap. Great product from a company who needs to make leaps and bounds for better customer service.

 

You could've also, just told them to cancel the order right there, and then ordered it again to what you need.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

I'm still kinda peeved about the battery issue. Forgot to call HP today. Does anyone have further details on this? I've also been toying with the idea of returning the Compaq and getting an eMachines with the Radeon 9600. However, despite all I've read, the GeForce 440 Go isn't as bad as everyone says. Not by a longshot. I have been playing the Onslaught portion of the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo the past couple of days on this laptop and it's certainly playable with full details. Even at the native 1280x800, it's playable with max settings. (Well, I didn't increase the draw distance because I'm not really bothered by it's current setting, but I bumped everything else up.) It's not running at 60fps with these settings, but I'd wager it's over 30.

The Compaq feels like a solid machine in terms of quality of construction and components. Does anyone have any experience with the eMachines laptops? A friend of mine has handled them both and though he bought the eMachines, he says he feels like it's a little cheap in terms of sturdiness and construction.

 

unreal 2004 really isn't as graphic intensive as most people think, afterall Brian is running it on his laptop at lower settings and he only has an integrated chip. If you really want to stress your chip try the Far Cry demo, probably can't use over low settings with that chip.

As far as the eMachines, I picked them both up at Circuit City and played around on them, and I also, thought the eMachines looks and feels very flimsy and of poor construction. However, from the comments I've seen in the eMachines section the owners tend to be realtively happy with them.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

Before I returned my R3000Z I could play Far Cry on low/medium settings. I could tell though going up any more than that and its really pushing the limit of what FPS you can play with. I also had the GeForce 440 go. The main reason I switched from this computer to the R3000T is because of the limited GPU. Now I will have a Radeon 9600 128MB much nicer. It really sucks they paired such a great CPU with such a huge handycap with the GeForce 440

 

Check this out to see if it helps...
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2437