Compaq B3800 series?

Hi guys,

Has anyone had a chance yet to play around with the new Compaq B3800 series?

I love the 128 meg ATI in it, as well as its features. Its just hard to find any reviews for it. I've read a couple which were fairly basic. The general gist I've gotten is that its a solid machine with good performance, in a small, thin chassis.

Any of you guys have one? Or know of any reviews for it?

These are the specs I've managed to find so far:
COMPAQ PRESARIO B3800 Notebook
Centrino Mobile Technology 1.8G processor
512 DDR RAM
80GB Hard Drive
DVD RW and CD RW combo
15" Display (1024 x 768) with 128mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card
Wireless LAN
Built in SD CARD reader
JBL® Pro integrated speaker
1 VGA Port
3 USB 2.0 Ports
1 IEEE 1394
1 Infra Red Port
1 Parrallel Port
1 Port Replicator Connector
1 RJ 11 Modem Connector
1 RJ 45 Ethernet Connector
S- Video Out
Microphone In
Headphone Out
Synaptics PS/2 Port Touchpad
Lithium Ion Battery with 4.5 hours battery life.

Its also listed on Compaq's website.

I even found one in Myers the other day, but didn't have time to have a closer look as the laptop was in a display cabinet unfortunately.

I can't seem to find this model anywhere else...

Any info or first hand experiences with this machine would be much appreciated guys.

Its time to retire my faithful IBM X20. At the moment Im looking at either the Sony VGN S480 or the Compaq B3820.

The only thing that annoyes me about the Sony is its Geforce GO6200 graphics card. If the Sony had the same graphics card as the Compaq I'd have one on order in minutes!

Cheers,
Jason

 

I believe this is an older unit. I've never heard of this product before until now. Some of the drivers for this product were released back in Sept 2004, so this can't be a very new product. Almost 1 year old.

You may want to look at the Sony as the GPU may be on par or possibly more powerful that the ATI 9700.

-Vb-

 

Hmmm I don't understand this.

www.compaq.com.au no longer lists the B3800 series?!

I had a look at it a couple of weeks ago... Im positive its a relatively new model... although now looking at it I could be wrong...

This is really strange! A review from CNET asia said it was a new model being released, and the review date was very recent.

Maybe I am wrong?

Anyone else got any info on this model? The specs look great.

Also I thought the dedicated ATI 9700 128 graphics would have much better performance than the Geforce GO 6200 in the Sony S Series?

 

Anyone got any more info on this model?

Im just totally confused now as to what the deal is with this model laptop! Is it new or old?

Is it still sold?

 

According to this website(see link), the B3800 is only available in the Southern hemisphere & the Asia Pacific region...so it is still be a newer model but only sold in specific markets..

http://www.laptopical.com/compaq-presario-b3800.html

 

yup, you're right. The B3800 series is only available in the AP region which i live in. It is one of the most popular laptops around here (people who buy it usually do their homework on it b4 they do) It's slim and features a good graphics card ATI 9700 128mb. There are 2 models actually. The B3807 has the cdrw/dvd and a slower processor. The newer B3818 has dvd writer and brightview i think. However its a tad expensive as the retail segment here is pretty much still B&M. The price is around SGD$2400.Assuming an exchange rate of USD $1 to SGD 1.67, it costs roughly USD $1437. Its quite an old model already,been in the market for almost a yr. But like i said, its still 1 of the best here.

Funny that I wanna buy a lappy frm your region and u guys are vice versa

Just got my ZV6000, but ahhh, that's another story entirely.....

 

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but i'm a PC techie, self employed, and have been looking for one of these for ages, and i just bought one on eBay, that needs a few parts. I've always liked HP/Compaq laptops, for their ease of use, they're easy to service, and disassemble, and the service manuals are always crystal clear.

The one i've bought needs a screen, memory, CPU, and memory/MiniPCI covers. Does anyone know of any flaws i should be aware of, such as splitting screen lids (like near the hinges which is so common on Mitac laptops).

I've bought it for a rebuild project, and currently run a Dell Inspiron 5150 with 64MB NVIDIA GeForce Go5200 graphics. Is the Mobility Radeon 9700 better than the Go5200? My P4 tower system, Lucy, runs a 9800XT 256MB, and is quite a beast, still runs Doom3 pretty well, with 2GB RAM.