Compaq Presario F500 series

I struggle to believe that there is NO discussion of this notebook on this forum, considering it represents among the best value in laptops for under $1000AUD...


...I have a V3142AU (and many other, better laptops, so dont worry ) and it seems to me that the F500 series is just a V6000 series with a matte black cover instead of a semi-glossy grey one? can anyone else tell me the differences between these series of notebooks? even when looking at them side by side in harvey norman, honest to god the only difference was the design of the case, and the fact that the V6000 was $100 more expensive...

 

You are correct, it is just a V6000 without the Imprint finish and media control. The internals are nearly the same as a de-featured V6000 CTO. There are a couple mini-reviews floating around NBR, and these units can be had for a rather sweet deal.

 

the curious thing about that is that you can get the V series (mine for instance) without the imprint shiny finish...which really makes me wonder why compaq even bothered with the F500...any chance you can link me to a couple F500 mini reviews? coz searching F503AU, F500, F5* brings up nothing on these forums

a mate of mine works at officeworks and he says often they get returned F500s in for about $699AU, would be nice to mod into a hackintosh or something similar.

EDIT - never mind, found a couple...apparently it is worse than the v6000 in that it loses the touch sensitive buttons, has no expresscard (ugh!) or PCMCIA slot, no card reader, and poorer build quality...i find this surprising as my non-imprint-finish V3142AU has no card reader and missing the firewire and third USB port as well...but at least it still has the expresscard slot i guess

 

I don't know firsthand about the build quality, but I'd guess that the casing is of similar construction to the V6000 line. For cost-effectiveness, it would make sense to have several cross-platform parts on the current Compaq line.

 

Can you get a extedned life battery for the Compaq F572US??

 

Yes, I believe it's for the V6000 series (But can be used for the F572US)...12 cell high capacity battery. However, it will "stick out" quite a bit...but it puts the laptop on a nice angle. I don't know if we are allowed to post website/pricing. But if you want to PM me, I saw a few places online for $95 for the 12 cell OEM battery.

I just purchased the F572US...at $479. The battery life is not to great. However, I think I'm getting between 1.5 and 2 hrs.

The only thing i don't understand, is I lose about 8% of battery life while it's in hibernate. My old lappy did not lose anything. Could be a S/W or H/W glitch?.

 

I may need more battery life for school but we will see thanks for the info. I got mine for $459 great price. PM on the way

 

I was disappointed on the lack of info on this series also. I picked up the F577CL from Sam's Club for about $630 and so far I really like it. Any opinions on this model?

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...=us&dlc=en&product=3445630&rule=31984&lang=en

 

I Have recently purchased a compac presario f500 and a dvd panasonic camcorder . These were purchased to film and watch our little baby. Do I need to purchase dvd burning software for copying our DVD-RW onto DVD-R ?

 

merlin,
I just picked up the same one, seams like pretty good deal... but, after 2-3 hours my AC adapter start running so hot, I couldn't hold it for more than few second, also the frame around the touchpad start getting warm as well.

Is yours doing the same?

I'm going to exchange mine, but I hope it's just defective unit and not the whole series.

 

Mine has been fine, I just upgraded to 2 gigs of memory, I really like the notebook for the price and what I need it for.

 

I don't use the touchpad all that often but have not noticed a whole lot of heat in either that or the adapter. They do get pretty warm but I don't think it is unusual.

 

Thanks for the comments guys. It looks like it's just my unit; I actually took some measurements - AC adapter goes up to 123F - that's 20 more than on my other laptop's adapter, and touchpad was at 104F, I'm not sure if that's normal, but it's sure not comfortable to handle.

 

i'm a F500 laptop user and i must say the battery life is not what i've expected(on the 6 cell batteries). just normal internet surfing about 1.5 hour and the low battery start beeping. Its been fully change before i start surfing. Maybe its because of the 15.4" screen draining the batteries or maybe the IGP(Geforce Go 6100 nforce 430)is not doing a great job in saving power. My F500 spec'd are 15.4" widescreen, 120gb hdd, 1gb memory, GeForce Go 6100, 6 cell batteries. I must agree the lappy tends to be preatty hot on the left side/touchpad.

 

Well, this is gonna sound really lame but I have the Presario F500 and I have tried to figure this out but I have no idea how to charge it. The battery icon on the system tray just says "plugged in, not charging" So how do I get it to charge?

 

Hi,
Bit of a old thread but I recently bought a refurb f572us through Sears. $399 minus 10% sale. I went to Crucial and got the 2gb kit for $55 and the V6000 12 cell from Circuit City. These additions make it pretty nice.

Charging should be automatic once you plug in the AC adapter. If the battery is fully charged it will just say "plugged in" not charging.

So far this unit is running great. The AC charger does get HOT while charging. And the touch pad area gets warm when the CPU is running hard.

My 2¢ YB

 

Just thought I'd chime in with my experience.

I bought my F500 at CompUSA a couple months back when a lot of them were closing my my area. The lone remaining CompUSA has about ~30 of these in stock and selling for $349 new. I bought 2 1gb sticks of RAM for an upgrade but that is all I've done.

I don't know the exact model of F50 I have but mine came with AMD Semptron 3500+, 1gb RAM, 80gb HHD, CD/DVD writer, 15.4" glossy, GeForce Go 6100.

The AC power does not get too hot nor does the touchpad. I do a fair amount of heavy duty use on this between VMware Workstation and Macromedia programs and haven't had any heat issues. (I do not sit this on my lap though either)

It came with Visa which pretty much pushed me into the RAM upgrade, but I think I will backrev to XP soon. I know that will probably be a challenge but I'll get it done. This laptop is really just something to have around the house for when I don't want to fetch my work laptop or when the wife wants to use it.

For the money, this was a great deal IMHO. Played many hours of Age of Empires / Rise of Nations when breaking it in.