Hp V2404us

Whats up guys. I`m new here and my names Jon. Well I just got a hand-me-down laptop, its a HP V2404US, and I`m just wondering if its worth me ordering a whole new power cable for it or not? Is it too outdated? Could I possibly get some new and improved hardware for it? Any opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks alot

 

Welcome Jon,

My advice would be to get (purchase or borrow) a power cord (brick ?) if that’s what you need and see if all is well with the unit. If not, return the cord and move on. If everything seems good though…. it might be worth some effort provided you don’t have to put too much into it.

The model you have is a retail iteration of a Compaq V2000Z / HP L2000 / HP L2300. From my experience with the L2000 (Live Strong version), I can tell you that electronically it’s a very good unit and was popular in the market as well as here at NBR in the ‘05/’06 time frame. Mechanically however, there were numerous issues with the lid hinges and latching system …. especially with the L2000 version. Small cracks would develop in the plastic just below the hinges and spread horizontally until the hinge failed. Our unit was eventually replaced by HP for this specific reason.

That said, if yours is in good mechanical condition (perhaps produced from a batch without the flaws) then, if everything still functions, electronically it’s still relevant and would make a very good machine for the Web, Office Apps, email, and light picture, video, and audio editing. It’s based on the ATI 200m chipset which graphically blew the doors off any integrated Intel offerings of the day and was the first ATI chipset to support Vista. The Turion ML series processors, though a bit power hungry, are very good and fully support 64bit operating systems. Hp offered the V2000Z series with up to a ML 40 processor clocked at 2.2GHz. Other larger HP models based on the same chipset were offered with up to a ML 44 at 2.4GHz. Late in the production run AMD also began producing a MT version of the Turion processor that was compatible with the 200m chipset and used 10w less power (ML = 35w vs. MT =25w). A number of folks here at NBR reported success retrofitting MT processors into the V2000 & V5000 series notebooks. The preferred processors of either the ML or MT series were those with the 1MB cache.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_1260_13851^12658,00.html

Another nice feature of the ATI 200m chipset was that, although HP supplied their units with PC2700 (DDR 333) RAM, the system boards fully supported PC3200 (DDR 400). By using DDR 400 RAM you got not only a boost in system performance but also a 10 to 15% increase in graphic performance because the system used shared memory. You can install up to 2GB of DDR 400 without issue (I used 2 x 1GB Crucial )

It's a single core system, it’s not DDR2, and it only supports ATA 6 hard drives, but it will run XP without issue… and Vista with a good configuration. If you’ve got a fully functional lightly used solid base unit to start with, you could add a new hard drive, some RAM, and a power brick, and for under $200 it would make a very nice unit with a 14” wide screen LCD, 802.11 wireless b/g support, Realtek NIC, modem, Cardbus slot, a 6-n-1 media card reader, and DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive. Add a new battery and you're mobil.

The L2300 was the last version of these units and has HP supplied drivers for both XP and Vista (which means it will probably run Windows 7). The last BIOS update (F.52) was issued to support Vista. Check here for BIOS & drivers for your desired OS and use the ATI Catalyst drivers for “integrated/motherboard” systems:

HP:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...us&dlc=en&submit.y=2&submit.x=8&lang=en&cc=us

AMD: (Processor Driver)
http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dyn...cd2c08-1432-4756-aafa-4d9dc646342f&ItemID=173

ATI: (Chipset & Graphics all in one)
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx


Best of Luck....